Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-09-08
THE THAMES IS DULL
DECLINE OF coYM4ncE ON THE
GREAT WATERWAY.
Nearly Deserted by Shipping - Some
Day Its Value Will Be
Discovered.

The wavelets of the deserted Thames lap
against the sterlfngs of the piers beneath,
swerve, and are carried down stream by the
brown, seaward-moving tide. A clutch of
grimy barges, moored stem and stern
against both ebb and flow lies out amid
stream, and nearer in to the Surrey shore
hay-laden wineries lazily disgorge Their
cargoes and dry their huge, red-ochred
sails in the sun. Now and then smutched
tug with green streak and vivid blue
funnel line coughs and fuses past them up
stream. with string of swerving bottoms
in her wake. laden to the gunwhale. In all
the fiotilla there is but one motionless fig
ure to be seen. near the blue thread of
smoke from the galley chimney, with a
back against the tiller of the rearmost
lighter shepherding his laundering flock
Perhaps in under the embankment turks a
rocking police patrol boat, four-oared and
watchful hardly making way against the
tide once day a racing shell slides up
stream with all the ridiculous ease that
first-class sculling suggests. That is all
The Dead Thames.
Southwest and east sweeps the long gran
lite gray curve of the embankment; piers,
also, there are, and stairs to mans desire;
but no craft puts In or out, and the food
drops eastward between the roaring streets
and the congested thoroughfares of the city
Of cities. unburdened, abandoned. and de-
spised All day long between the green
plane trees on the shore hurries the flicker
of fast carriages, all night the securing
chase of double-eyed, quick traffic, but no
boathook engages the ringbolts where the
transparent lumber floods and drains away
upon the unworn granite step; no steamer
grinds It's tenders along the floating raft
piers edge. The Thames is dead, and her
glory is departed.
Some day she will be discovered again.
Some day it will be realized that the river
Is the Oldest the chea pest and the best of
all the highways of the metropolis, and
the Thames will enjoy her own again. But
it may not be for many years. Perhaps
she will have to wait till the neglected Sur
rey shore Is at last taken In hand by some
plain man who wishes to make a million
pounds without risk and without trouble,
and sees that if the Rand outcrop ran be-
tween Commercial road and the water
there would perhaps be less Of a fortune to
be made by it's exploitation. AS it is, the
river runs between a Syracuse and Su
burra, and neither princess nor pauper
thinks 1t worth her while to use it. Was it
for this, one wonders that tens of millions
were spent upon the locking and banking
of the stream from Trewsbury to Black
friars?
A Tide Of Pure Air.
There is great talk of "open spaces
now. Why will no one see that the strip
of moving air between Southwark and the
Strand is worth more to the clogged at
| mosphere than all the lungs that any coun-
Gil ever secured? If half a rood of dirty
gravel and tombstones, toffined four
squares within five stories of grimy brick
and barely nursing one anaemic plane, is
secured at enormous cost to the public as
a recreation ground-it is the word used
the press teens at once with congratula-
ton upon the far-sighted -humanitarianism
of the local representatives. When shall we
see included among the preserves for which
the council makes itself responsible the
great ocean of pure air that movers on the
face of the moving tide and drifts on the
stillest day from the country through the
| town? When will 1t be realized that 1t is
better to make effective water park twice
the size of Hyde Park that runs through
the very heart of the capital than at an
equal expense to add to the open spaces
| which year after year are driving the poor
further and still further from their work !:
OF all the items in the little budgets of the
poor that of riding money. Is one of the
most pathetic. 1t is the contribution which
they make year after year to the acuuisi-
ton and upkeep of clearings from which
the buildings that might have housed them
near by have been swept away or pro-
hibited.
The Folly of It.
One leans over the parapet and thinks 1t
is all ridiculously easy. That is the
worst of it. A company that proposes to
burrow through three miles of London
clay at huge cost in labor and compensa-
ton in order that the suffocating passen-
gers may save the time that the congestion
of the streets loses them viii. have its CAPT
tai subscribed twice over Can no one
teach the children of London the use of the
bow of silvered brown that curves and re-
curves from Wandsworth bridge to Old
Swan pier?