at, I was taken to see the illuminations in our
district--we were living near the Langham Hotel then--for the marriage
of some princess or the birth of some royal baby. Whenever I am away
from London--never more than ten days at a time--and think of her, she
comes to me as I saw her then from a height of three-foot-five: huge
black streets rent with loud traffic and ablaze with light from roof to
pavement; shop-fronts full of magical things, drowned in the lemon light
which served the town at that time; and crowds of wonderful people whom
I had never met before and longed deeply to meet again. I wondered where
they were all going, what they would do next, what they would have for
supper, and why they didn't seem superlatively joyful at their good
fortune in being able to ride at will in cabs and omnibuses and take
their meals at restaurants. There were jolly fellows, graceful little
girls, all better clad than I, enjoying the sights, and at last, like
me, disappearing down side-streets to go to mysterious, distant homes.

HOMES. Yes, I think that phrase sums up my London: the City of Homes. To
lie down at night to sleep among six million homes, to know that all
about you, in high garret or sumptuous bedchamber, six million people
are sleeping, or suffering, or loving, is to me the most impressive
event of my daily life.

Have you ever, when walking home very late at night, looked down the
grey suburban streets, with their hundred monotonous-faced houses, and
thought that there sleep men, women, and children, free for a few hours
from lust and hate and fear, all of them romantic, all of them striving,
in their separate ways, to be happy, all of them passionate for their
little span of life; and then thought that that street is but one of
thousands and thousands which radiate to every point, and that all the
night air of one city is holding the passions of those millions of
creatures? I suppose I have a trite mind, but there is, to me, something
stupendous in that thought, something that makes one despair of ever
saying anything illuminative about London.

Often, when I have been returning to London from the country, I have
been moved almost to tears, as the train seemed to fly through clouds
and clouds of homes and through torrents of windows. Along the miserable
countryside it roars, and comes not too soon to the far suburbs and the
first homes. Slowly, softly, the grey incertitude begins to flower with
their lights,