ad, Manchester Road--are but rows
of uniform cottages, with pathetically small front gardens and frowzy
"backs," which, throughout the week, flap dismally with the most
intimate items of their households' underwear. Its horizon is a few
grotto-like dust-shoots, decorated with old bottles and condensed-milk
tins.

It is, I admit, the ugly step-child of parishes; but, then, I love all
ugly step-children. It is _gauche_ and ridiculous. It sprawls. It is
permanently overhung with mist. It has all the virtues of the London
County Council, and it is very nearly uninhabitable. Very nearly
uninhabitable ... but not quite.

For here are many thousands of homes, and where a thousand homes are
gathered together there shall you find prayer and beauty. Yes, my
genteel lambs of Kensington, in this region of ashpits and waterways and
broken ships and dry canals are girls and garlands and all the old
lovely things that help the human heart to float and flow along its
winding courses. If you inform the palate of the mind by flavours, then
life in Queen's Gate must be a round of labour and lassitude, and, from
the rich faces that pass you in the Isle of Dogs, you know that it must
always be the time of roses there. Stand by the crazy bridge at the
gates of West India Dock, at six o'clock, when, through the lilac dusks,
comes that flock of chattering magpies--the little work-girls--and see
if I am not right.

And the colour.... There is nothing in the world like it for depth and
glamour. I know no evenings so tender as those that gather about the
Island: at once heartsome and subdued. The colour of street and sky and
water, sprinkled with a million timid stars, is an ecstasy. You cannot
name it. You see it first as blue, then as purple, then lilac, rose,
silver. The clouds that flank the high-shouldered buildings and chimneys
share in these subtle changes, and shift and shift from definite hues to
some haunting scheme that was never seen in any colourman's catalogue.

On the night when I took Georgie round the Island a hard, clear frost
was abroad. The skies glittered with steady stars. The streets seemed
strangely wide and frank, clear-cut, and definite. A fat-faced moon
lighted them. The waters were swift and limpid, flecked with bold light.
The gay public-house at the Dock gates shone sharp, like a cut gem.
Georgie had never toured the Island before, and he enjoyed it
thoroughly. As we stood on the shuddering bridge the clear night