London Awakes By W. Pett Ridge.
OUT ALL NIGHT.
THE great town is a-bed. A day of busy, crowded hours ; a day with strenuous traffic in certain quarters and with easy content in others, a day of the year resembling in these things its three hundred and sixty-four fellows, is exacting its toll, and London, tired of its work and tired of its pleasures, takes a brief space of quiet. The last fight has taken place in Canning Town ; the last struggle through crowded staircases in Grosvenor Square is accomplished. There exist no rich or poor, fortunate or unlucky, good or bad, young or old ; with closed eyes all are equal, and dreams that come to sport with dormant minds care nothing whether the address be Eaton Square, S.W., or Tod Street, Limehouse. Just for an hour or two the millions of London are all little children. Come with me, and see how London awakes.
LATE AND EARLY.
It goes to bed late and rises early: through these few intervening hours the main streets are, in wise parishes, fully lighted, and the wastrel, slippering along, is a king with all these illuminations existing for him and him alone. High-loaded waggons up from the home counties saunter along in a leisurely way, the carmen relying on their horses for finding the way to the Borough, to Covent Garden, to Spitalfields; a motor-car whirs by with a muffled-up driver sulky at finding so little traffic to disturb. The round light from policemen’s lanterns dances from doorways to windows, from windows into areas, goes in butterfly fashion up blind alleys, and sometimes discovering a bundle of rags rests there. The policeman says, not unkindly, ” Now then, this won’t do, you know,” and the bundle of rags replies hoarsely and vehemently, ” To think that it’s the likes of me that keeps the likes of you,” but rolls out all the same, starting off with elaborate pretence of keeping an important engagement, but trundling itself back as soon as the whispered sound of the constable’s footsteps has gone.
