Oh, how different from Lympne (pronounced "mph")!
UNCLE SAM. "IF I WEREN'T SO PREOCCUPIED WITH IRELAND I MIGHT BE TEMPTED TO GIVE MYSELF A MANDATE FOR THIS."]
[Illustration: _Magistrate (to incorrigible vagrant on his thirteenth appearance)._ "I'M TIRED OF SEEING YOU, AND DON'T KNOW WHETHER TO SEND YOU TO GAOL OR THE WORKHOUSE."
_Vagrant._ "MAKE IT GAOL, MY LUD, AS THERE YOU DO GET A ROOM TO YERSELF, WHEREAS IN THE WORK'US YOU NEVER KNOW WHO YOU RUB SHOULDERS WITH."]
The trouble about Hampstead is that it is so very much further from Kensington than Kensington is from it. Every day, I believe, there pass between Kensington and Hampstead telephone conversations something like this:--
_Kensington._ When are you coming to see us?
_Hampstead._ Why don't _you_ come _here_ instead?
_Hamp._ I like that. Do you know that a bus runs the whole way from here to Kensington?
_Ken._ I don't blame it. But I'm jolly sure it doesn't go back again.
Then Hampstead rings off in a rage and nothing is done about it.
Mr. RUDYARD KIPLING must surely have known of this regrettable estrangement or he would never have sung--
"North is North and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Except in the Tube at Leicester Square or the corner of Oxford Street."
Anyhow you will find that people living in Hampstead tend more and more to regard themselves as dwellers in the mountains, and take defiantly to wearing plaid shawls and big hobnail brogues, and carry alpenstocks in the Underground with them. They acquire, moreover, the keen steady gaze of those who live in constant communion with the silent hills, so different from the Oriental fatalism in the eyes of the Kensingtonite, which comes from the eternal contemplation of the posters of _Chu Chin Chow_.
It is possible, however, to visit Hampstead, if you are sufficiently venturous, by bus, tube, tram or train. If you are very rich the best way is to take a taxi-cab as far as Chalk Farm, where London's milk supply is manufactured. You cannot go further than Chalk Farm by taxi-cab, because the driver will explain that he is afraid of turning giddy, having no head for heights. You have then the choice of two courses, either to purchase the cab outright and drive it yourself, or to finish your journey by the funicular railway.