THE TWO PERILS—LONDON BY NIGHT.
Anyone at all acquainted with metropolitan life cannot fail to have been struck with the number of objects which seem, by some mysterious agency, to fade away and disappear altogether.
Years ago, when the disappearance of Mr. Speke (not the “great discoverer,” but the great discovered) attracted so much attention, the papers were full of stories of similar mysterious absences of some people who had gone out some day, “in their usual health and spirits,” and never came back again, nor been heard of, dead or alive, since.
It is impossible they could have been all murdered.
It is astonishing the number of persons who are missing annually, and who are never heard of more.
Take city life in prosperous times—what lots of new undertakings are daily set on foot, which utterly fail and languish in bad years.
What becomes of the “runners” who, in times of commercial infliction, are so well known in every office?
Individuals who are agents for the sale of all manner of speculative securities, who invite you to realise a swift and easy fortune by purchasing a lead mine in the antipodes, or a coal field at the North Pole, or by taking shares in a projected company for journeying in balloons to the moon.
At seasons of commercial depression these individuals disappear as completely as the summer grasshoppers vanish at the approach of winter.
Places disappear in an equal degree—the old landmarks are passing rapidly away from London. Holborn-hill has gone, Temple-bar has vanished—or the last remains of it will in a few days—Vauxhall-gardens, Cremorne, are things of the past, and the once famous Argyll-rooms have received a knock-down blow.