London, easy-going London, has her short cuts, too. That is where she differs from the methodical, rectangular, convenient cities of the United States. She is full of cunning by-ways, and every street has a character of its own. The Strand was called “The Strand” a thousand years ago, because it _was_ a strand—a strip of beach which ran alongside the Thames at the foot of a cliff (which has long since been smoothed and sloped out of existence) and was submerged each high tide. The English fought a great battle with Danish pirates near by, and to-day the dead Danes sleep their last sleep in St. Clement Danes’ Church, right in the middle of the Strand.
Charing Cross, again, is the last of a great chain of such Crosses, stretching from London to Scotland, each a day’s march from the next. They were set up at the end of the thirteenth century by King Edward the First of England, to commemorate the last journey of his beloved Queen—his _Chère Reine_—who died while accompanying him upon a campaign against the Scots. At each stopping-place on his homeward journey the King erected one of these crosses to mark the spot where the Queen’s body lay that night. Many have perished, but you can still trace some of them along the Great North Road—Neville’s Cross, Waltham Cross, and finally _Chère Reine_ Cross, or Charing Cross. That strikes the imagination. So do Aldgate, Aldersgate, Moorgate, London Wall, and other streets which go back to the days when London really was a walled city.
But a walk around London repays itself. There is Cleopatra’s Needle on the Embankment—the veteran among all monuments of the world, except perhaps its sister in Central Park, New York. It was in existence fifteen hundred years before Christ, in the city of Heliopolis. It looked down upon the Palace and Court of Queen Cleopatra in Alexandria. After that it lay prostrate in the sands of the Egyptian desert for another fifteen hundred years. It was finally presented to the British Government by the Khedive of Egypt. It was towed to England on a raft, and was nearly lost during a storm in the Bay of Biscay. Recently, the Zeppelins have tried dropping bombs on it, as you can see for yourself. But a mere bomb or two is nothing to a veteran with a constitution like that.