Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/141

 opposition to declare itself that he might trample it down.

Near eight o'clock he recognized Waterloo Bridge and the cold Thames below stealing like a felon through the vapors of the dawn. With a stupefied surprise he awoke to the sensation of being launched once more into the sharp and too-definite business of the time. The pavements were now swarming with people, the roads with omnibuses, cabs, and vans. Traffic was belching out of every street; clerks and seamstresses were scurrying to their employments, masticating their breakfasts as they went. Vendors of newspapers and hawkers of food were tearing the gray air to pieces with their cries. He emerged from the orgy of his passion to find that he was up to the throat and being stifled in pandemonium, even before he was aware that his feet had entered it.

The lines of palaces across the river, towering tier upon tier above the embankment, with their majestic bulks half-thrust through the curtain of December mist which the first streaks of day had seemed to thicken, fell upon the imagination of the wayfarer, who had slackened his pace all at once to a footsore limp as he crossed the bridge and crept towards them. At a distance they stood insolent, aloof, and cynical. He could hardly believe that in one of these wonderful caravanserais he, the starving, the friendless, and the solitary, had eaten and drunk only a few hours before. It was not feasible that such palaces as these could touch a life so obscure at any point. Penniless, friendless, lacking even life's common necessaries, in the midst of six millions of people, who con