The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Dawn of a To-morrow, by Frances Hodgson
Burnett, Illustrated by F. C. Yohn

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Title: The Dawn of a To-morrow

Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett

Release Date: March, 1996 [eBook #460]
Most recently updated: February 5, 2005

Language: English

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THE DAWN OF A TO-MORROW

by

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

I

There are always two ways of looking at a thing, frequently there are
six or seven; but two ways of looking at a London fog are quite enough.
When it is thick and yellow in the streets and stings a man's throat and
lungs as he breathes it, an awakening in the early morning is either an
unearthly and grewsome, or a mysteriously enclosing, secluding, and
comfortable thing. If one awakens in a healthy body, and with a clear
brain rested by normal sleep and retaining memories of a normally
agreeable yesterday, one may lie watching the housemaid building the
fire; and after she has swept the hearth and put things in order, lie
watching the flames of the blazing and crackling wood catch the coals
and set them blazing also, and dancing merrily and filling corners with
a glow; and in so lying and realizing that leaping light and warmth and
a soft bed are good things, one may turn over on one's back, stretching
arms and legs luxuriously, drawing deep breaths and smiling at a
knowledge of the fog outside which makes half-past eight o'clock on a
December morning as dark as twelve o'clock on a December night. Under
such conditions the soft, thick, yellow gloom has its picturesque and
even humorous aspect. One feels enclosed by it at once fantastically
and cosily, and is inclined to revel in imaginings of the picture
out