There he has
his wish for three days; there he can never see anything but houses,
or, if he has to walk along the sea, he can rest his eye on herds of
unhappy people and huge advertisements, and he can hear the newspaper
boys telling lies (perhaps special lies he has paid for) at the top of
their voices; he can note as evening draws on the pleasant glare of gas
upon the street mud and there pass him the familiar surroundings of
servility, abject poverty, drunkenness, misery, and vice. He has his
music-hall on the Saturday evening with the sharp, peculiar finish of
the London accent in the patriotic song, he has the London paper on
Sunday to tell him that his nastiest little Colonial War was a crusade,
and on Monday morning he has the familiar feeling that follows his
excesses of the previous day.... Are you not glad that such men and
their lower-fellows swarm by hundreds of thousands into the "resorts"?
Do you not bless the railways that take them so quickly from one Hell
to another.
Never let me hear you say that the railways spoil a countryside;
they do, it is true, spoil this or that particular place--as, for
example, Crewe, Brighton, Stratford-on-Avon--but for this
disadvantage they give us I know not how many delights.
Pages:
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78