FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   219   220   221   222   223   224   225   226   227   228   229   230   231   232   233   234   235   236   237   238   239   240   241   242   243  
244   245   246   247   248   249   250   251   252   253   254   255   256   257   258   259   260   261   262   263   264   265   266   267   268   >>   >|  
fferent, by the way, from making sketches in time of peace. It is a business full of possibilities, when all manner of spy suspicions are afloat. I made up my mind to do a sketch of the Royal Exchange. Not as I should have done it a year before, mind you, nor even three months before, but now, with the thought of bomb-dropping Zeppelins in the back of my mind. It occurred to me when I was hurrying along one rainy evening in a taxi past the Stock Exchange, the Globe Insurance, the Bank of England. Everywhere cabs drawn up along the curbing, cabs slipping past, people, great moving crowds of people with their umbrellas up, moving off down Threadneedle and Victoria. "A lot of human life and some very beautiful architecture and a good part of the world's business, all concentrated here. And I thought to myself what might happen should the cultured Germans get as far as London, and should the defenders of the world's civilization drop a bomb down into the heart of things here. I pictured to myself what havoc could be wrought. "And I thought, too, of places like Southwark. Ever been in Southwark? Horrible. A year before, when I was making the sketches for my Dickens book, I spent a great deal of time in the Southwark section. Now, with the prospect of Zeppelins, I thought again of Southwark. A bomb in a Southwark street! Good Lord, can you imagine the horror of it! There fifty or sixty families are packed into a single tenement, and the houses in their turn are packed one against the next along streets so narrow that the buildings seem to be nodding to each other, touching foreheads almost. Desperately poor people, children swarming every moment of the day and night up and down these dark stairways, up and down these hideously dark streets. Now drop a bomb in the midst of it all. That is what Englishmen are thinking of now. "I didn't go over into Southwark; I couldn't stand it. The next day I went back to the Stock Exchange to make my sketch. I've done sketches in London before--every nook and cranny of it--but this time I felt a little nervous when I got there with my umbrella and my little tools. But I managed it. I said to the bobby, I said--" And then Mr. Smith, getting up from his chair and relapsing into the frown that always means he is going to tell a story, showed how he managed it. It is impossible to reproduce Mr. Smith's inimitable manner. "'Are you, now?' said I. "'Well, 'ow can I tell?' said he.
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   219   220   221   222   223   224   225   226   227   228   229   230   231   232   233   234   235   236   237   238   239   240   241   242   243  
244   245   246   247   248   249   250   251   252   253   254   255   256   257   258   259   260   261   262   263   264   265   266   267   268   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Southwark

 

thought

 

people

 
Exchange
 

sketches

 
managed
 

moving

 
London
 

Zeppelins

 

making


business

 

streets

 

sketch

 

manner

 
packed
 
houses
 
single
 

families

 

tenement

 

hideously


stairways
 

children

 

touching

 
buildings
 

nodding

 

foreheads

 

Englishmen

 

swarming

 
narrow
 
Desperately

moment
 

relapsing

 
inimitable
 

reproduce

 
showed
 

impossible

 

fferent

 

couldn

 

umbrella

 

nervous


cranny

 

thinking

 

Everywhere

 

curbing

 

slipping

 

England

 

Insurance

 
crowds
 

umbrellas

 

Victoria