face--the divine brow of mind above, the human suffering-drawn
cheek beneath--my own thought became set and strengthened. That
I could but look at things in the broad way he did; that I
could not possess one particle of such width of intellect to
guide my own course, to cope with and drag forth from the iron-
resisting forces of the universe some one thing of my prayer for
the soul and for the flesh.

CHAPTER VI

THERE is a place in front of the Royal Exchange where the wide
pavement reaches out like a promontory. It is in the shape of a
triangle with a rounded apex. A stream of traffic runs on either side, and
other streets send their currents down into the
open space before it. Like the spokes of a wheel converging
streams of human life flow into this agitated pool. Horses and carriages,
carts, vans, omnibuses, cabs, every kind of conveyance cross each other's
course in every possible direction. Twisting in and out by the wheels and
under the horses' heads, working a devious way, men and women of
all conditions wind a path over. They fill the interstices
between the carriages and blacken the surface, till the
vans almost float on human beings. Now the streams slacken, and now they
rush amain, but never cease; dark waves are always rolling down the incline
opposite, waves swell out from the side rivers, all London converges into
this focus. There is an indistinguishable noise--it is not clatter, hum, or
roar, it is not resolvable; made up of a thousand thousand footsteps, from a
thousand hoofs, a thousand wheels--of haste, and shuffle, and quick
movements, and ponderous loads; no attention can resolve it into a fixed
sound.