Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1881-06-25


IL is uncomfortable. Do not understand
that this is a typical English family, but
one that came under observance. Nine
o'clock and
The Grande Armes Of m Musicianers"
anl debauches from Spitalfields, and
Leather Lane, HolbOrn, and iar-o1
Clerkenwell, and. in compact columns,
move eastward. Nine o clock and grand
army wends through the street where
not long since Temple Bar stood, charges
down Holborn Hill, escalades Finsbury,
captures Cornhill by a dexterous nank
movement, and sits down and invests
the Bank OF England in regular form.
This is a part OF London going to busi-
ness in the city. II the morning be
fine, the pavement OF the Strand ana
Fleet street looks quite radiant with the
spruce clerks walking down to their OIL
fees, governmental, financial and COM
mercial. Marvellous young bucks some
of them are. These are the
Customers. You See ct q Glauce.
whom the resplendent wares in the
hosiers' shops attract, and in whom
those many individuals find avid custo-
mers. These are the dashing young men
who purchase the pea-green, the orange
and the rose-pink gloves, the crimson
braces, the Kaleidoscope shirt studs, the
shirts embroidered with dahlias, deaths
heads, race horses. sun flowers and bal.
let girls.
These are the glasses OF city fashion,
and the mould OF city form Tor whom
the legions OF fourteen, OF fifteen, and
of sixteen shilling trousers, all unri'
vailed, patented, and warranted, are
made for these ingenious youths-coats
with strange names are devised, scaris
of wondrous pattern and texture dis
patched from distant Manchester and
Paisley. For these the shinyest hats,
the nobbiest OF sticks CLEAN through
shop windows; for them the geniuses oil
allround collars" invent every week
fresh yokes OF starched linen,
Pleasant Instruments of Torture.
reminding me equally OF the English
pillory, the French lucarne to the gull
lotine, THAT window from which the
criminal looks ont into eternity, and
the homely and cosmopolitan dog COL
lars! There are some OF these gay clerks
who 90 down to their offices with roses
in their button.holes, and with pipes in
their mouths. There are some who wear
pegtop trousers, chin tuits, eye glasses,
and vanished boots. These mostly
turn of in the Strand, and are in the
Admiralty or Somerset House Govern
ment offices). As for the Government
clerks of the extreme West end-the
patricians of the Home and Foreign Oh
ices, the bureaucrats OF the Circumlo-
cution office, in a word-they
ride down to Whitehall and Down
ing street in broughams or in
park hacks. Catch them in omnibuses.
or walking on the vulgar pavement, for
sooth. observe to return to the clerks
who are bending city-wards-that the
most luxuriant whiskeIs belong to the
Bank OF England. You may, as gen.
ersl rule,
Disting guish Government from CONNER
cial Clerks
by the stern reputation OF the razor, as
applied to the beard and moustaches by
the former. You may know the cashiers
in the private banking houses by their
white hats and buff waistcoats; you may
know the stock brokers by their career
ing up Ludgate Hill in dog carts and by
the pervading sporting appearance oi
their costumes; you may know the
Jewish commission agents by their
tlushy broughams, with !ap-dogs and
ladies in crinoline beside them; you
may know the sugar bakers and the
soap boilers by the comfortable double
bodied carriages with fat horses in
which they roll along; you may know,
finally, the men with million OF money
by being ordinarily very shabby, and
by their wearing shocking bad hats,
which have seemingly never been
brushed, on the backs OF their heads.
Every road, says the proverb, leads
to Rome" every commercial way leads
TO the Bank OF England. And there, in
the midst OF that heterogeneous archi
tectural tumble, between the Bank OF
England itself, the Royal Exchange, the
Poultry, Cornhill and the Globe
Insurance office, the vast train
OF omnibuses, that have come
from the West, and that have
come from the East, that have been
rumbling along the macadam, while |
was pressing on one OF the pedestrians,
with another great army OF clerks inside
and outside, their knees drawn up TO
their chins, and their chins resting on
their umbrella handles, set down their
Loads OF Cash Books and Ledger Filters
What an incalulable mass OF figures
must there be collected in those com.
mercial heads! What legions OF $. d.
What a chaos OF cash debtor, contra
creditor, bills payable and bills receiva
BILE; waste books, day books, cash books
and journals; insurance policies, broker
age, dock warrants and general CONNER
cisl bedevilments! They file off to their
several avocations, to spin money fo5
Others, often, poor fellows, while they
themselves are blest with but meagre
stipends. So the omnibuses meet at the
Bank and disgorge the clerks by thou
sands; repeating this operation scores
of times between nine and ten O'Clock.
But YOU are not to delude yourself, that
either by wheeled vehicle or by the
humber conveyances known AS
"shank's mare" and the "marrowbone
stage"-in more refined language, walk
fng-have all those who have business
in the city reached their destination,
not 10 speak Of the
Under and Over Ground Railways
that run everywhere in the city be.
meath, between and over peoples
houses. The silent highway has been
their travelling routes. On the broad,
but not the silvery and sparkling bosom
OF Father Thames, they have been
borne in swift. grimy little steamboats,,
crowded with living freighls from Chel
ses, and Pimlico, and Vauxhall piers
from Hupeerford, Waterloo, Temple,
Blackiriars and South thworth-straight by
the hay boats, with their lateen sails
dscolored in a manner that would de.
light painter, straight by Thames po-
lice bulks, by four and six -osrei cutters
by coal barges, by oozy wharves, and
grim chimneyed factories, by littl;
wheezy, tumble-down, waterside public
houses; by breweries, and maSy-win'
dowed warehouses; by the stately gar.