In The Midst
Of This Spectacle, This Din And Uproar, The Women Are Chaffering And
Bargaining Quite Calmly, Watching The Scales To See That They Get
Their Full Pennyworth Or Sixpennyworth Of This Or That.
To the
student of faces, of manners, of voices, of gestures; to the person
who sees unwritten and unwritable stories in all these groups of
men, women, and children, the scene reveals many things:
Some
comedies, many tragedies, a few plain narratives (thank God!) and
now and then - only now and then - a romance. As to the dark alleys
and tenements on the fringe of this glare and brilliant confusion,
this Babel of sound and ant-bed of moving life, one can only surmise
and pity and shudder; close one's eyes and ears to it a little, or
one could never sleep for thinking of it, yet not too tightly lest
one sleep too soundly, and forget altogether the seamy side of
things. One can hardly believe that there is a seamy side when one
descends from his travelling observatory a little later, and stands
on Westminster Bridge, or walks along the Thames Embankment. The
lights of Parliament House gleam from a hundred windows, and in the
dark shadows by the banks thousands of coloured discs of light
twinkle and dance and glow like fairy lamps, and are reflected in
the silver surface of the river. That river, as full of mystery and
contrast in its course as London itself - where is such another? It
has ever been a river of pageants, a river of sighs; a river into
whose placid depths kings and queens, princes and cardinals, have
whispered state secrets, and poets have breathed immortal lines; a
stream of pleasure, bearing daily on its bosom such a freight of
youth and mirth and colour and music as no other river in the world
can boast.
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