ROADS INTO LONDON
plot of grimy waste land. Other shops begin again. This place always piques my curiosity. I seem to trace in it a bold speculation's falling to pieces, getting the nickname "Blank's Folly", growing begrimed, being forgotten.
These great roads into London are pleasant enough, inspiring too and impressive when they are full of people. In the times when one is in the mood, when one is "looking"—and at such times the top of the horse-drawn tram is the best of all vehicles—one sees glimpses of so many things that it is like sitting before an unending stage procession, only more actual, more pathetic and much more inspiring. The other year I came in by way of the Kennington Road; along Newington Butts, past the Elephant, up London Road our eyes had grown accustomed to a gloom in the upper air. The Obelisk milestone in St. George's Circus appeared, pallid under its lamps, pale and grimy, Georgian, grim and surprising; the tall wedge of the Eye Hospital was a deep black among liquid shadows deeper still. All the mysterious and gloomy London of ancient names and ancient lives seemed converging out of those shadows into that dark space. And suddenly, at a swinging round of the tram, there was a long trail of quivering lamps, pink, red, and white, low down on the ground, vanishing in the distance of Waterloo Road.
The road was "up" for putting down the conduits of the electric system, and these lights guarded the trenches. But there had been no announcement, no
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