Page:Letters from England.djvu/31

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TRAFFIC
 

evidently owing to the proximity of hell, thereupon they again took me out and rushed me through new catacombs to a moving stair case, which clatters like a mill and hastens upwards with the people on it; I tell you, it is like a fever. Then more stairs and staircases, and in spite of my objections they led me out into the street, where my heart sank. Without end or interruption moves a fourfold girdle of vehicles; buses, panting mastodons dashing along in droves with flocks of tiny mortals on their backs; purring motor-cars, lorries, steam engines, cyclists, buses, buses, flying packs of motor-cars, people rushing along, tractors, ambulances, people scrambling like squirrels on to the tops of buses, a new flock of motor elephants, that’s it, and now it all comes to a standstill, a grunting and rattling flood, and it cannot move forward; but I cannot move forward either, recalling the horror which was then roused in me by the idea that I must get to the other side of the street. I managed it with a certain amount of success, and since

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