The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-08-07 00:00:00

vincial town. A fine clay is, of course, the one thing
necessary for its success. Arrangements have been
made for many months pat, and everything which
care and cost could procure has received the utmost
attention. The prize list has been adjusted, the
judges nominated, the band engaged, the invita-
tions sent out to relatives and friends, special trains
put on, and all the neighbourhood placarded; but
the great event on which everything depends is, of
urarse, the weather. In vain are the public told of
the immense difference between the price of tickets
taken beforehand, and of tickets purchased on the
day. The public decline to invest in any speculation
of the kind. They wait and see what sort of a day it
is likely to turn out. The hour is anxiously waited
I which shall indicate a pleasing surplus or a heavy call
upon the g-usra.ntors. A wet day is a period of
financial gloom, while brilliant sunshine indicates a
time of happy prosperity. As to the good which such
exhibitions do, there is no doubt that a garden is one of
the most innocent and perfect of pleasures. It has
been well said that the love of flowers is often the
finishing grace of a noble Character, and the redeeming
virtue of a debased one. Moreover such gatherings
do a great deal to cement provincial life, and to en-
courage a healthful recreation amongst its quiet
workers.

London has sometimes been compared to a mighty
sea, into which thousands plunge, never to rise again
to the surface. There is no doubt that there are many
places in the land in which the very name of London
is heard with something very nearly approaching a
shudder. A mysterious shake of the head follow' the
mention of the word, as though to convey the senti-
ment "What a wicked place!" No evil, no peril, no
degradation, is too great to be esteemed the special
attribute of the great city. Yet those who know it
best fear it least. It is not so black as it is painted.
The dark picture has its streaks of light, and its
beauty grows on the careful and patient student.
Watch the streams of well-dressed people hurrying to'
their places of worship on Sunday; listen to the music
of the bells as it is sent forth by hundreds of steeples;
and you will come to the conclusion that there are a
good many well-behaved and decorous people in Lon-
don, after all. There are cases in which the place is a
disappointing one. When a man comes into the vast
human hive, with notions of his personal deserts, his
talents, and his importance, and finds that he is rudely
jostled by the crowd in Fleet-street or Cheapside, he
is apt to contrast this seeming want of manners with
the respect paid to him in his own town, where all
men touch their hats to him and are glad if they can
be favoured with a condescending nod in return. So,
too, when a clever young man has elicited the ad-
miration of his country friends, and has been assured
that London is the place for his abilities, he soon
discovers ,that the golden pavements have long been
worn away by myriads of hurrying faet in as
much haste to achieve fortune as himself.
Fame is not achieved in a day; and modest
and patient endeavour is the true philosopher's
stone. That the metropolis is a very maelstrom of
destructiveness, of all that is good, that she is the
modern Babylon, that her wickedness cries out to
Heaven for vengeance as did the sins of the cities of the
Plain, that the salt among her population has lost its
savour, and is henceforth fit only to be cast out and
trodden under the foot of man—these are the opinions
held by some of the best and gentlest of our kind. But
these see only from a distance the smoke that hangs
over our heads; those who live, and move, and have
their being in the great ocean of humanity see in it a
productive field for the exercise of honesty, indußtry,
and intelligence, and one in which, although there may
be many showers and much sunshine between the sow-
ing of the seed and the reaping of the harvest, the
harvest is generally reaped after all.