The Strand is so still that you may count the footsteps as they sound; and the pale moon looks down pityingly on the vast, feverish, semi-slumbering mass. Here we stand at length by Upper Wellington Street; a minute’s walk to the right will bring us to the “Bridge of Sighs.”
Which never sleeps! Morning, and noon, and night, the sharp, clicking turnstile revolves; the ever-wakeful tollman is there, with his preternaturally keen apron. I call this man Charon, and the river which his standing ferry bridges over might well be the Styx. Impossible, immobile, indifferent, the gate-keeper’s creed is summed up in one word—“A halfpenny!” Love, hope, happiness, misery, despair, and death—what are they to him? “A halfpenny for the bridge” is all he asks! but “a halfpenny for the bridge” he must have.
“Please, sir, will you give me a halfpenny for the bridge?” A phantom in crinoline lays her hand on my arm. I start, and she hastens through the turnstile—
“Anywhere, anywhere,
Out of the world,”
perhaps. But I may not linger on the mysteries of the Bridge of Sighs. They are among the “Secrets of Gas,” and the pictured semblance of the place here must content you.
HOUR THE TWENTY-FOURTH AND LAST—THREE A.M.—A BAL MASQUE, AND THE NIGHT CHARGES AT BOW STREET.
When the bad Lord Lyttelton lay on his last bed—thorn-strewn by conscience—and haunted by the awful prediction of the phantom which appeared to him in the semblance of a white dove, telling him that at a certain hour on a certain night he should die, some friends who had a modicum of human feeling, and wished that wicked lord well, thinking that his agony was caused by mere terror of an impending event—half nervous, half superstitious—advanced the hands of the clock One Hour, and when the fatal one, as it seemed, struck, his Lordship started up in bed, apparently much relieved, and cried out joyfully that he had “jockeyed the ghost.” But when the real time arrived, and the real hour was stricken on the bell, the prediction of the white dove was verified, and the bad Lord Lyttelton, shrieking, gave up the ghost.
Moral: there is not the slightest use in playing tricks with the clock. Were it otherwise, and were I not deterred by this awful warning in the case of Lord Lyttelton, I would entreat some kindly friend to stand on tiptoe, and just push the hour-hand of this clock of mine back, were it but for one poor stunde of sixty minutes. But in vain. As well ask Mr. Calcraft to postpone his quarter-to-eight visit with a new rope, when the law has consigned you to the tender mercies of that eminent functionary. As well may Crown Prince Frederick entreat the Governor of Cüstrin to defer the execution of wretched Lieutenant Katte, “till he can write to the king.” As well may the unfortunate little Pants, hopelessly embroiled for the fifth time this morning with his Greek Delectus, implore the terrible Doctor Budd to spare him the rod this once. As well might I write to the Postmaster-General to say that it will not be convenient for me to deposit the last batch of newspapers in the window till half-past six p.m.; or beg the London and North-Western Railway Company to delay the departure of the Manchester night express till I have finished my wine and walnuts at the Victoria Hotel, Euston Square. The fiat has gone forth. Missa est. Judgment is over, and execution is come; and I may say, with Lord Grizzle in “Tom Thumb:”