76 LONDON CHILDREN 



paths were beaten into mire by the passing 

 and re-passing of a thousand feet, acres 

 of bluebells had been uprooted and taken 

 away, many trampled and crushed, or 

 gathered and cast carelessly on the paths. 

 The apple blossom was stripped from the 

 trees. In his instinctive effort to possess 

 beauty, man invariably destroys it for is 

 not all beauty ever elusive ? It is the sub- 

 conscious, or deeper than subconscious, 

 realisation of this elusiveness of beauty that 

 causes the sadness of its contemplation 

 the blossoms were gone, a whole spring- 

 life of them, carried away by the people 

 who had come from Walworth, Shoreditch, 

 and Woolwich. Branches of those graceful 

 trees, the silver birches, had been torn and 

 wrenched off; not content with decimating 

 the flowers, grasping hands had broken 

 the smaller trees. A week ago, before the 

 fatal beauty of the apple bloom had 

 drawn the hordes from their strongholds, 

 I found dozens of thrushes' and black- 



