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Penelope's English Experiences-Part4_Kate Douglas Wiggin(1856-1923)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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matter in the garments of sophistication,--we have little time to

observe more than the colour of the lumbering vehicle.



We like the Cadbury's Cocoa 'bus very much; it takes you by St.

Mary-le-Strand, Bow-Bells, the Temple, Mansion House, St, Paul's,



and the Bank.

If you want to go and lunch, or dine frugally, at the Cheshire



Cheese, eat black pudding and drink pale ale, sit in Dr. Johnson's

old seat, and put your head against the exact spot on the wall where



his rested,--although the traces of this form of worship are all too

apparent,--then you jump on a Lipton's Tea 'bus, and are deposited



at the very door. All is novel, and all is interesting, whether it

be crowded streets of the East End traversed by the Davies' Pea-Fed



Bacon 'buses, or whether you ride to the very outskirts of London,

through green fields and hedgerows, by the Ridge's Food or Nestle's



Milk route.

There are trams, too, which take one to delightful places, though



the seats on top extend lengthwise, after the old 'knifeboard

pattern,' and one does not get so good a view of the country as from



the 'garden seats' on the roof of the omnibus; still there is

nothing we like better on a warm morning than a good outing on the



Vinolia tram that we pick up in Shaftesbury Avenue. There is a

street running from Shaftesbury Avenue into Oxford Street, which was



once the village of St. Giles, one of the dozens of hamlets

swallowed up by the great maw of London, and it still looks like a



hamlet, although it has been absorbed for many years. We constantly

happen on these absorbed villages, from which, not a century ago,



people drove up to town in their coaches.

If you wish to see another phase of life, go out on a Saturday



evening, from nine o'clock on to eleven, starting on a Beecham's

Pill 'bus, and keep to the poorer districts, alighting occasionally



to stand with the crowd in the narrower thoroughfares.

It is a market night, and the streets will be a moving mass of men



and women buying at the hucksters' stalls. Everything that can be

sold at a stall is there: fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, crockery,



tin-ware, children's clothing, cheap toys, boots, shoes, and sun-

bonnets, all in recklessconfusion. The vendors cry their wares in



stentorian tones, vying with one another to produce excitement and

induce patronage, while gas-jets are streaming into the air from the



roofs and flaring from the sides of the stalls; children crying,

children dancing to the strains of an accordion, children



quarrelling, children scrambling for the refuse fruit. In the midst

of this spectacle, this din and uproar, the women are chaffering and



bargaining quite calmly, watching the scales to see that they get

their full pennyworth or sixpennyworth of this or that. To the



student of faces, of manners, of voices, of gestures; to the person

who sees unwritten and unwritable stories in all these groups of



men, women, and children, the scene reveals many things: some

comedies, many tragedies, a few plain narratives (thank God!) and



now and then--only now and then--a romance. As to the dark alleys

and tenements on the fringe of this glare and brilliantconfusion,



this Babel of sound and ant-bed of moving life, one can only surmise

and pity and shudder; close one's eyes and ears to it a little, or



one could never sleep for thinking of it, yet not too tightly lest

one sleep too soundly, and forget altogether the seamy side of



things. One can hardly believe that there is a seamy side when one

descends from his travelling observatory a little later, and stands



on Westminster Bridge, or walks along the Thames Embankment. The

lights of Parliament House gleam from a hundred windows, and in the



dark shadows by the banks thousands of coloured discs of light

twinkle and dance and glow like fairy lamps, and are reflected in



the silver surface of the river. That river, as full of mystery and

contrast in its course as London itself--where is such another? It



has ever been a river of pageants, a river of sighs; a river into

whose placid depths kings and queens, princes and cardinals, have



whispered state secrets, and poets have breathed immortal lines; a

stream of pleasure, bearing daily on its bosom such a freight of



youth and mirth and colour and music as no other river in the world

can boast.



Sometimes we sally forth in search of adventures in the thick of a




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