of my childhood; every child likes a canal. A canal recalls the first
wonder. We all remember the wonder with which we watched the first
barge, the wonder which the smoke coming out of the funnel excited.
When my father asked me why I'd like to go to Dublin better by canal
than by railroad, I couldn't tell him. Nor could I tell any one to-day
why I love a canal. One never loses one's fondness for canals. The
boats glide like the days, and the toiling horse is a symbol! how he
strains, sticking his toes into the path!

There are visits to pay. Three hours pass--of course women, always
women. But at six I am free, and I resume my meditations in declining
light as the cab rolls through the old brick streets that crowd round
Golden Square; streets whose names you meet in old novels; streets
full of studios where Hayden, Fuseli, and others of the rank
historical tribe talked art with a big A, drank their despair away,
and died wondering why the world did not recognise their genius.
Children are scrambling round a neglected archway, striving to reach
to a lantern of old time. The smell of these dry faded streets is
peculiar to London; there is something of the odour of the original
marsh in the smell of these streets; it rises through the pavement and
mingles with the smoke. Fancy follows fancy, image succeeds image;
till all is but a seeming, and mystery envelops everything. That white
Arch seems to speak to me out of the twilight. I would fain believe it
has its secret to reveal. London wraps herself in mists; blue scarfs
are falling--trailing. London has a secret! Let me peer into her
veiled face and read. I have only to fix my thoughts to
decipher--what? I know not. Something ... perhaps. But I cannot
control my thoughts. I am absorbed in turn by the beauty of the Marble
Arch and the perspective of the Bayswater Road, fading like an
apparition amid the romance of great trees.