A Wet Night in London 



and bolts; ask Whistler or Macbeth, or some one to 

 etch them, get the Royal Antiquarian Society to pay 

 a visit and issue a pamphlet ; gaze at them reverently 

 and earnestly, for they are not easily to be matched 

 in London. Iron girders and spacious roofs are the 

 modern fashion ; here we have the Middle Ages well- 

 preserved slam! the door is banged-to, onwards, 

 over the invisible river, more red signals and rain, 

 and finally the terminus. Five hundred well-dressed 

 and civilised savages, wet, cross, weary, all anxious 

 to get in eager for home and dinner; five hundred 

 stiffened and cramped folk equally eager to get out 

 mix on a narrow platform, with a train running off 

 one side, and a detached engine gliding gently after 

 it. Push, wriggle, wind in and out, bumps from 

 portmanteaus, and so at last out into the street. 



Now 7 , how are you going to get into an omnibus? 

 The street is " up/' the traffic confined to half a 

 narrow thoroughfare, the little space available at the 

 side crowded with newsvendors whose contents bills 

 are spotted and blotted with wet, crowded, too, with 

 young girls, bonnetless, with aprons over their heads, 

 whose object is simply to do nothing just to stand 

 in the rain and chaff; the newsvendors yell their 

 news in your ears, then, finding you don't purchase, 

 they " Yah! " at you; an aged crone begs you to buy 

 "lights"; a miserable young crone, with pinched 

 face, offers artificial flowers oh, Naples ! Rush 

 comes the rain, and the gas-lamps are dimmed; 

 whoo-oo comes the wind like a smack ; cold drops get 

 in the ears and eyes; clean wristbands are splotched; 

 greasy mud splashed over shining boots; some one 

 knocks the umbrella round, and the blast all but 

 turns it. " Wake up! " " Now then stop here all 

 night? " " Gone to sleep? " They shout, they 

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