Iditarod pioneer., 1917-01-27
LONDONERS THESE DAYS
 AFRAID TO GO HOME IN DARK

LONDON, Dec l0-If YOU are afraid to 20 home in the dark these days you'd bet ter not venture out after tea time in Lon don. You feel as if you had been trans ported back into the medieval or more fit tingly the dark ages, when you step blink ing like an owl into the murky, dmly lighted thorouShfares.
 Most of the theaters give daily matinees and but two night performances g week. It is far from cozy thing after the play to be all alone in London in the dark ard n the outside of taxi looking in with
 bsolutely no hope of being on the inside looking out,
 The price of petrol is so high and the chauffeurs are so scarce that taxis at night fell become as fieetng and elusive as bats a-wing Thew whlzz by you deaf to your
 uts and blind to your tears.
 Taxi urlver, are now known as "haugh- ties" so fastidious and particular have they become about their fares If they size you up and like your looks, even then you must not look too optimistic. They may not like your destination and re- use to take you after all. Indeed so near perfection do you have to be in appearance and address that it is really simpler and afer to begin your walking right away.
 There are not many women driving taXls
 at, but they are running elevators, acting IS conductors on buses, cles ming streets, working in railway yards, running delivery wagons aad working in munitions factories. Is a curious thing that in all the manual
 renuous and more vlrife work heretofore
 one by the men the women now excel, but these trying to replace the men in the finer
 mingly more feminine arts of cooking ailoring and hair dressing are but sorry ubstitutes for the sterncr sex,
 As leve}pr of sexes and classes the war is doing wonders that vie with its horrors for balancing result. Women are com ing into their own as independent wage workers and the "colonels lady and Judy OGrady" are rubbing elbows in the hos 1tals and munitions factories. The rich nd titled are working side by side with he poor and lowly. The pampered pets have given up their motors so the poor wounded Tommies may ride, and after the theater they, too, are forced often to hoct it home to the ancestral manse, since the "haughties" are no respecters of either birth or breeding.
 Yes. times are dark and streets gre dark n London, but there are bright spots. For though it's Zepps that make London dark, ,London makes light of Zepps. Sometimes they make the alight and sometimse they make aIight of them When word arrives bat Zepps are on the way there IS some rest and thrill in staying up all night and I'D on roof to glimpse huge, flaming mass. pointed out by the silver fingers ct he searchEghts, that falls from the sky like a Gargantuan skyrocket set Ctt by an intrepid young British airman,
 But bringing airsbps blazing out of the clouds and women filling bombs lnste2d of nursing bottles, and pedestrians blunderng around in the Stygian streets, are but com nonnface.
 When 1t comes to turning all the clocks ID an hour for summer and now back agan n hour fer the winter season. then t dces seam going q bit too far. It's really un- ,ettling for ones social engagements, don't ou know, and fer the life of her Ladv Diana can't remember whether her dgte with Lord Percy is at o'clock winter time or summer time Verify, tempting fate IS as nothing to juggling time.
 The two men whom 1t took to personally adjust Biz Ben's hands across his startled face undoubtedly felt the truth of this riginsl enhorism, the like of which l al ways have on tan on tjme.-EX.