We had no reply to this thrust, and the lid dropped down with a sound of quiet triumph.
And so home. And my dreams that night were filled with visions of a huge Monster, reeking with strange odours, issuing hoarse-sounds of malicious laughter and standing for ever and ever in the middle of Edgware Road with the clock opposite pointing to a quarter to two, a rueful face in the corner staring fixedly at a big bag and a tipsy gentleman in a tall hat finding his way back to Baker Street in happy converse with a policeman.
Gone is the old London over which the shade of Mr Hansom presided like a king. Gone is the “orf horse” with all its sins; gone is the rosy-cheeked driver with his merry jokes and his eloquent whip and his tales of the streets; gone is the conductor who, as he gave you your ticket, talked to you in a spirit of leisurely comradeship about the weather, the Boat Race, or the latest clue to the latest mystery. We amble no more. We have banished laughter and leisure from the streets, and the face of the motor-bus driver, fixed and intense, is the symbol of the change. We have passed into a breathless world, a world of wonderful mechanical contrivances that have quickened the tempo of life and will soon have made the horse as much a memory as the bow and arrow or the wherry that used to be the principal vehicle of Elizabethan London. As I watched the hansom bowling along Regent Street until it was lost in the swirl of motor-buses and taxis I seemed to see in it the last straggler of an epoch passing away into oblivion. I am glad it went so gallantly, and I am half sorry I did not give the driver a parting cheer as he flicked his whip in the face of the night.
[Original]
