s the day wears on. These
pleasant people are walking about the streets for a very definite
reason. What is that? It is that there is nothing else to do. That is
the tragedy of the London Sunday; there is nothing else to do. Why does
the submerged man get drunk on Sunday? There is nothing else to do. Why
does the horse-faced lady, with nice clothes, go to church on Sunday?
There is nothing else to do. Why do people overeat themselves on Sunday?
There is nothing else to do. Why do parents make themselves stiff and
uncomfortable in new clothes, and why do they get irritable and smack
their children if they rouse them from their after-dinner sleep? Because
there is nothing else to do. Why does the young clerk hang around the
West End bars, and get into trouble with doubtful ladies? Because there
is nothing else to do.

And in the evening you feel this more terribly. If it is summer, you may
listen to blatant bands in our very urban parks, which have been
thoughtfully and artistically "arranged" by stout gentlemen on the
London County Council, whose motto seems to be: "Let's have something we
_all_ know!" or you may go for a 'bus-ride to Richmond, Hampton Court,
St. Albans, or Uxbridge, or Epping Forest. If you want to know, merely
for information, to what depths London can sink in the way of amusing
itself on Sundays, then I recommend the bands in the parks. Otherwise
there is something to be said for the 'bus-ride. You cannot enjoy
yourself in London on the Lord's Day, but you can take London with you
into some lonely spot and there re-create it. Jump on the Chingford 'bus
any Sunday evening, and let yourself go with the crowd. Out in the
glades of the Forest things are happening. The dappled shades of the
wood flash with colour and noise, and, if you are human, you will soon
have succumbed to the contagion of the carnival. Voices of all
varieties, shrill, hoarse, and rich, rise in the heavy August air,
outside "The Jolly Wagoners," and the jingle of glasses and the popping
of corks compete with the professional hilarity of the vendors of
novelties. Here and there bunches of confetti shoot up, whirling and
glimmering; elsewhere a group of girls execute the cake-walk or the
can-can, their van sustaining fusillade after fusillade of the forbidden
squirters, their rear echoing to "chi-ikes," catcalls, and other
appreciations, until an approaching motor-'bus scatters them in
squealing confusion. By the bridge, the blithe, wel