Finally, there is a curious difference between English and American usage in the use of the word /river/. The English invariably put it before the proper name, whereas we almost as invariably put it after. /The Thames river/ would seem quite as strange to an Englishman as /the river Chicago/ would seem to us. This difference arose more than a century ago and was noticed by Pickering. But in his day the American usage was still somewhat uncertain, and such forms as /the river Mississippi/ were yet in use. Today /river/ almost always goes after the proper name.
/Street Names/--"Such a locality as 'the /corner/ of /Avenue H/ and /Twenty-third/ street,'" says W. W. Crane, "is about as distinctively American as Algonquin and Iroquois names like /Mississippi/ and /Saratoga/."[49] Kipling, in his "American Notes,"[50] gives testimony to the strangeness with which the [Pg299] number-names, the phrase "the corner of," and the custom of omitting /street/ fall upon the ear of a Britisher. He quotes with amazement certain directions given to him on his arrival in San Francisco from India: "Go six blocks north to [the] corner of /Geary/ and /Markey/ [/Market?/]; then walk around till you strike [the] corner of /Gutter/ and /Sixteenth/." The English always add the word /street/ (or /road/ or /place/ or /avenue/) when speaking of a thoroughfare; such a phrase as "/Oxford/ and /New Bond/" would strike them as incongruous. The American custom of numbering and lettering streets is almost always ascribed by English writers who discuss it, not to a desire to make finding them easy, but to sheer poverty of invention. The English apparently have an inexhaustible fund of names for streets; they often give one street more than one name. Thus, /Oxford/ street, London, becomes the /Bayswater/ road, /High/ street, /Holland Park/ avenue, /Goldhawke/ road and finally the /Oxford/ road to the westward, and /High Holborn/, /Holborn/ viaduct, /Newgate/ street, /Cheapside/, the /Poultry/, /Cornhill/ and /Leadenhall/ street to the eastward. The Strand, in the same way, becomes /Fleet/ street, /Ludgate/ hill and /Cannon/ street. Nevertheless, there is a /First/ avenue in /Queen's Park/, and parallel to it are /Second/, /Third/, /Fourth/, /Fifth/ and /Sixth/ avenues--all small streets leading northward from the Harrow road, just east of Kensal Green cemetery. I have observed that few Londoners have ever heard of them. There is also a /First/ street in Chelsea--a very modest thoroughfare near Lennox gardens and not far from the Brompton Oratory.