, and on the bashful little streets, whose
lights chime on the darkness like the rounding of a verse. Strange
streets they are, where beauty is unknown and love but a grisly phantom;
streets peopled, at this hour, with loose-lipped and uncomely
girls--mostly the fruit of a yellow-and-white union--and with other
things not good to be talked of. I was philosophizing to my friend about
these things, and he was rhapsodizing to me about the stretch of
lamplights, when a late 'bus for the Bank swept along. We took a flying
mount that shook the reek of Limehouse from our clothes and its
nastiness from our minds, and twenty minutes later we were taking a
final coffee at the "Monico."

A DOMESTIC NIGHT

CLAPHAM COMMON

_THE LAMPLIT HOUR_

_Dusk--and the lights of home
Smile through the rain:
A thousand smiles for those that come
Homeward again._

_What though the night be drear
With gloom and cold,
So that there be one voice to hear,
One hand to hold?_

_Here, by the winter fire,
Life is our own.
Here, out of murk and mire,
Here is our throne._

_Then let the wild world throng
To pomp and power;
And let us fill with love and song
The lamplit hour._

A DOMESTIC NIGHT

CLAPHAM COMMON

At six o'clock every evening London Bridge vomits its stream of tired
workers, hurrying home, most of them living at Clapham Common or similar
places with a different name. Some of them walk home along those
straggling streets which, after many years, reach the near suburbs; some
of them go by car or 'bus. All are weary. All are gay. They are Going
Home.

I think it was Mr. Mark Sheridan who was singing, some few years back,
that "All the girls are lover-ly by the seaside!" I do not know the poet
responsible for this sentiment, but I should like to take him to any of
the London bridges and let him watch the crowd coming home at six
o'clock. He was all wrong, anyway. The girls are not lovely by the
seaside. If there is one place where the sweetest girl is decidedly
plain and ill-kempt it is at the seaside. His song should read, "All the
girls are lover-ly up in London!" And they are, whether they be
chorus-girls, typists, shop-girls, Reuter's messenger-girls, modistes,
or factory girls. Do you know those delightful London children, the
tailors' collectors, who "fetch it and bring it home"? Their job is to
take out th