e goblin-like advertisements that
spit soap and other things at unoffending eyes at night in Trafalgar
Square are bad enough, but the advertisements in New York are worse
still. There is a fine square here called Madison, in the centre of
which trees rise from fountain-watered grass, and statued figures of
people who were men in their day and did things, palatial buildings,
dignifying commerce, form the square. Yet while I have been here I
have watched, right over a house on one side of it, a huge white
hoarding being erected, and have watched a great vulgar advertisement
of cigarettes being daubed upon it. A beastly, ugly smear on one of
the beauty-spots of the city.

[Illustration: Artillery Crossing A Drift Near Ladysmith.]

Bang-bang; bang-bang; bang--loud, insistent; ping-ping--sharp,
piercing; the first from the trolly-car, the second from a
steam-trailing automobile; a booming roar from the ground
accompanying the first, a buzzing rattle the second. Just a block away
a far louder rattle still comes from the elevated railway. Here, down
town, the streets are paved with cobble stones, and the severity of
the climate in the winter is given as the excuse for the irregularity
of the surface. Heavy lorries and wheels of horsed vehicles jangle
over them, but the general uproar is so great that the bells on the
horses' collars are inaudible, and sight is the only sense that makes
their approach perceptible. The stream of trolly-cars passes and
re-passes, perpetually making short pauses for the passengers to nip
in quickly or--get left. Across from where I write is a restaurant
with a legend above it, "Quick Lunch." This, I think, is rather
peculiar to New York; in other cities it would be either "Good Lunch,"
or "Cheap Lunch;" here the attraction is that it is "quick." It is
only necessary to watch the way that the customers hurry in and hurry
out to see the significance of it. The day is not half long enough
for the workers down here, and the work is at such high pressure that
time for feeding can hardly be spared; it is not feeding or taking a
meal, it is just stoking the human engine, and quick stoking at that.

The streets of London, even in the City, are calm and peaceful in
comparison with those here in New York. The very ground throbs with
vibration, the air throbs with the medley of noises, the buildings
throb with both. It is not quite obvious why the streets should be so
noisy. All the bells and gongs and da