ROADS INTO LONDON
shops, rag and bone shops, the queer, grimy, sometimes astonishingly "old established", sometimes very transitory little odds-and-ends shops (where the servants of the well-off sell old "Time's," and kitchen grease, and where workmen buy second-hand tools and old blankets) of the outlying districts. They will disappear, I suppose, soon enough, move further out, and continue their individual, ratlike, and very useful existences.
Almost immediately afterwards there are long "parades" of shops, stores, emporia, all terracotta, plate glass, soft stone and gilt letters. Crowds move slowly in front of these—it is not possible to hurry even on the broad pavements, and most people move leisurely, with the head a little to one side, looking at the large windows, carrying parcels. Then there are more old houses behind old trees, or behind little terraces, then, more new shops. A brand new theatre, immense, domed, suddenly holds aloft, at its very apex, a large allegorical figure that appears on the point to soar over all these buildings and all these people. It is startling, because one does not expect the spectacular; it suggests the domed, statue-crowned brown stone buildings that in Strasburg the Prussians have erected to flaunt in front of the gracious French château of the governor of Alsace-Lorraine.
The effect in London is just as much one of jumble and the incongruous, but there is nothing of the sinister. If it is not an impression of pure happiness it certainly implies a contagious cheerfulness and good humour.
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