The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1873-06-27
Observation-Disclosures.
How London Appears to n Stranger.

a Streets crossing each other at all angles
except right angles. Streets built up on
both sides with plain, yellow brick houses
|. for miles in length Streets running under
massive viaducts built of granite and iron
@Streets commencing broad and well built,
With magnificent edifces, diminishing into
Z dirty lanes, the abode of poverty and vice.
Streets commencing straight and ending in
curve. Streets curved at both ends and
crooked in the middle. Streets paved with
blocks of granite, others with asphaltum'
Exceptional streets laid in Nicholson.
Streets at the west magnificent beyond de.
yfz7Eyiption, through which the rich roll in ele-
mt carriages. attended by servants in os-
y < Atatious liveries. Streets in the east where
Enest poverty and hideous vice jostle
Sainst each other in the daily struggle for
3istence. Lanes alleys, dark courts, OBJ
sSure passages, by-ways, delusive roads, in.
~tricate paths and uncertain short cuts. all
strangely confused. Shops in the east where
the necessities oflife are sold in subdivisions
at penny apiece. Shops at the west filled
to repletion with silks at guinea yard.
river spanned by score Of stone bridges,
each as firm and solid as the earth itself.
Thousands of public bulldogs, rare speci-
mems of beauty built by world-renowned
architects, long since passed away; monu-
ments like index fingers pointing to tho sky;
countless factories with slender chimneys,
each one pouring out column of black
smoke to cast gloomy pail over palace and
shrine: Docks built far inland, with narrow
gates opening to the river docks crowded
with ships from every quarter OF the globe
innumerable passenger steamers shooting
by the arches of the bridges, steamships,
ships, barks, schooners, barges, scows, mud
boats, propellors, tugs dredging machines,
war vessels, canal boats, and floating hos
y pitfalls and prisons lying ut anchor ON the
IA dirty waters below the bridges. Thirty
tl,.ssis3as of river bank lined with great ware
Tx ~ ..and crowded with merchandise from
rs Is4lrthest ends of the earth. Millions OF
people to meet omnibuses, cabs, carts, street
cars, drays' carriages, wagons, rushing
through the crowded thoroughfares. or
crossing the -xsidges from side to side.
Railroads everywhere; trains shooting I'M
der the streets, trains crossing the tops OF
y houses engines dragging cars for miles un-
der ground; trains laundering overhead
while steam of unseen engines is coming up
through the iron gratings at your feet
Flaming advertisements plastered against
blank walls Plate-glass shop windows
brilliantly lighted from the outside. Gin
palaces, so radiant that you must wink
when you look at them; gin palaces il
which the poor, silly working people spenc
for beer what their children need for fooC
and clothes; gin palaces where countless wo
men go with infants in their arms to drink
gin with ragged, bloated men. Churche!
without equal in the world; churches tillet
on Sunday with well dressed, intelligent
contented Christian people, churches which
are placed on exhibition during the weel
for hire. Galleries ofpaintings, haunts @
vice, gambling saloons, hotels, theatres
museums, gardens, courts, clubs, bankin!
institutions, breweres, colleges, schools
universities, prisons, markets, stalls, pala
So. ces. hustled into obscurity behind dirt.
brick walls. Immense wholesale bushes
done in dark narrow lanes. Buildings o
every conceivable size quality and valu
spread thickly over thirty five square mile
of area and thinly over far more--that'
London,