Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1913-02-24

with every cubic inch of air 81 coo par
TIDES; in Londcu, 190)0,J00. Six thous-
and tons of coal, it is said, are in sus-
pension in tie London air every day
during the winter months-enough to
encourage any fog; and some two
million ch:mneys, all burning SOFT aofl,
are throwing off incessant volumes OF
smut laden smoke. These are the
things that scientific people talk about
when they try to explain fogs And
then they go on to tell us that togs are
| expensive. that they cost London i've
millions year; that single days fog
causes the METROPOLIS to consume
enough gas and electricity, in excess o.
her ordinary requirements, to supply
town of fifty Il oHsand people for
twelve months; and that fogs leave
behind them a deposit Of six tons to
the square mile. No doubt they are
quite right. No doubt Sir William Rich
mond is right when he saws that to get
rid Of fogs we must all join the Smoke
abatement Society: and Sir Oliver
Lodge is right when he tells us To
erect Marconi- like masts at different
points in the fog area and riddle the
ii, nd with electrical DIS harges; and
they urge us to burn anthracite coal at
two guineas a ton and other REFORM
trs, are right when the insist that we
should abandon CRATE fires and warm
ourselves as do Americans, with radia-
tors and hot water pipes; and still 9TH
or reformers are right wien they argue
that there is nothing for it but to fill
the Thames and RAE Hampstead to
the ground.
The only trouble is that they are all
wrong in thinking Of fog az 4 nui-
sance 10 be abated, instead Of as
pleasure to be enjoyed. Fogs, undoubt-
eGly are becoming rarer. and may. in
time, disappear altogether. 1t must ba
twenty years AT least since fog last
cd a week, and two or three winters of
late have shown a tendency to pass
by without one at all. Perhaps the fin
est specimen of the last decade was
ra !sed WHEN Dom Carlos of Portugal
lunched at the GuildhalL II was day
of magnificent fog. 1t began soon after
breakfast in a swirl of greenish- yell
low; il solidified by eleven o'clock into
= most becoming orange; by noon it
had hardened into pea soup; and later
on in the afternoon it followed the
laws of its foggish nature by changing
into d yet denser black. With a happy
sense of what the occasion called for,
il lay over the route of the royal pro-
cession with loving and peculiar per-
sistence. The street lamps fought vain
y against it; the banners and bunt-
irg elung sodden and undistinguishable
to their poles; for miles on end 1t Waa
possible 20 see across the roadway;
even the scarlet of the troops was blur
red into khaki; and all that one could
see of the procession was d phantom
passing of horses and carriages. To
compare last Mondays effort with so
spirited and in every way SO memora-
BILE a performance would be sheer fat
terry. Yet. the impenetrable yellowness
that iloated through the streets OF
London up to Monday noon was, ,i IL it's
WHY srgularly welcome. Tt Showed
that fogs, after all, were not an ana
chronsm and that they still, from
time TO time, intended to descend up
on us. There was a grateful sense of
renewing an old acquaintance when,
after the romance of dressing and
hreal1fasting by artificial light, one
walked into the smart and the choke
of fantasy, into a London of muffled
shouts, and half-suspected lights, ard
sudden ghost like vanishings. When
fcgs are finally subdued. London will
be robbed of her one distinctive touclf
of subimity. Together they are poetry.
charma blacl1-diadem of mystery and
adventure Apart-but who can think
of them apart? A London without fogs
1. I.
There is nothing at all esoteric about
the right enjoyment of fog. Anyone
can enter into the spirit of the thing
who has the capacity of breathing
SCOT, sulphur, and iron filings with
comfort. Given that capacity. the IasA
cination of a fog needs no further in
itiation. One of its greatest merits is
that it blots out London. London is not
n daylight city. All Its CRIME and
gloom it's smoke Drowned tawdriness,
its perpetual look of thunder. stand ouo
unescapably when the sun shines. But
given a yellowish, mystifying haze that
wells without quite obscurng, that rubs
out all the edges and angles and makes
the outline of things culver before
ones eye, that softens all externals in
to n faint orange harmony-and even
London becomes artistically bearable,
an unsubstantial, fragmentary, elusive
city of tantalizing delights. Or take.
again. day when the haze has pro-
NOTED itself into genuine fog. Think
of the exhilaration to be had just from
a wall, through the streets of how,
taking a taxi one feels as though one
We're embarking al sea; of the funda
mental unreality Of everything and
everyone; of how buildings and peo-
pie become suddenly transmitted into
presences of immense possibilities and
objects of arresting curiosity when YOU
can suspect rather than see them; OF
the thrilling sense of Invisible, half
guessed millions walking. working. all
round one IN a topsy- turvy world.
"block' in Piccadily ON fine day is
merely an evaporation; in a fog 1t is
an adventure-gay sinister, Dam
tesque, whatever you care to make it.
To lose oneself as completely as in n
blizzard along a route one could swear
was known by heart to have to guide
ones steps by touch and ear alone, to
see the immeasurable ghostiiness Of .
rnDtor- hIS broa king through the