to have for a week, and I’m sorry to say you’re only allowed a bit of bread, too.”  It is human perversity to want a great deal of bread when bread becomes scarce; even war bread, which, by the way, is better than white.  But the rest of the luncheon, when it came, proved that John Bull was under no necessity of stinting himself.  Save for wheat and sugar; he is not in want.  Everywhere in London you are confronted by signs of an incomprehensible prosperity; everywhere, indeed, in Great Britain.  There can be no doubt about that of the wage-earners—­nothing like it has ever been seen before.  One sure sign of this is the phenomenal sale of pianos to households whose occupants had never dreamed of such luxuries.  And not once, but many times, have I read in the newspapers of workingmen’s families of four or five which are gaining collectively more than five hundred pounds a year.  The economic and social significance of this tendency, the new attitude of the working classes, the ferment it is causing need not be dwelt upon here.  That England will be a changed England is unquestionable.

The London theatres are full, the “movies” crowded, and you have to wait your turn for a seat at a restaurant.  Bond Street and Piccadilly are doing a thriving business—­never so thriving, you are told, and presently you are willing to believe it.  The vendor beggars, so familiar a sight a few years ago, have all but disappeared, and you may walk from Waterloo Station to the Haymarket without so much as meeting a needy soul anxious to carry your bag.  Taxicabs are in great demand.  And one odd result of the scarcity of what the English are pleased to call “petrol,” by which they mean gasoline, is the reappearance of that respectable, but almost obsolete animal, the family carriage-horse; of that equally obsolete vehicle, the victoria.  The men on the box are invariably in black.  In spite of taxes to make the hair of an American turn grey, in spite of lavish charities, the wealthy classes still seem wealthy—­if the expression may be allowed.  That they are not so wealthy as they were goes without saying.  In the country houses of the old aristocracy the most rigid economy prevails.  There are new fortunes, undoubtedly, munitions and war fortunes made before certain measures were taken to control profits; and some establishments, including a few supported by American accumulations, still exhibit the number of men servants and amount of gold plate formerly thought adequate.  But in most of these great houses maids have replaced the butlers and footmen; mansions have been given over for hospitals; gardeners are fighting in the trenches, and courts and drives of country places are often overgrown with grass and weeds.

“Yes, we do dine in public quite often,” said a very great lady.  “It’s cheaper than keeping servants.”