THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 33 



the place which I had known in other days, still lin- 

 gered upon the broad green, while the mimic din of 

 trade rattled down the tidy streets, or gave tongue 

 in the shrill whistle of an engine. The college still 

 seemed dreaming out its classic beatitudes, and the 

 staring rectangularity of its enclosures and build- 

 ings and paths seemed to me only a proper expres- 

 sion of its old geometric and educational traditions. 



Most people know this town of which I speak, 

 only as a scudding whirl of white houses, succeeded 

 by a foul sluiceway, that runs along the reeking backs 

 of shops, and ends presently in gloom. A stranger 

 might consider it the darkness of a tunnel, if he did 

 not perceive that the railway train had stopped ; and 

 presently catch faint images of a sooty stairway, be- 

 grimed with smoke up and down which dim figures 

 pass to and fro, and from the foot of which, and the 

 side of which, and all around which, a score of belch- 

 ing voices break out in a passionate chorus of shouts ; 

 as the eye gains upon the sootiness and gloom, it 

 makes out the wispy, wavy lines of a few whips mov- 

 ing back and forth amid the iiproar of voices ; it 

 lights presently upon the star of a policeman, who 

 seems altogether in his element in the midst of the 

 hurly-burly. Becloaked and shawled figures enter 

 and pass through the carriages ; they may be black, or 

 white, or gray, or kinsfolk you see nothing but be- 

 2* 



