As we crawled through the fog I watched his taut concentration, admired his judgment as he executed a circling movement round a candidate for suicide, as he jammed on the brakes within a yard of a halted motor-car, as he put on speed over a thin patch of fog, and as he shot ahead past a less speedy driver.
Now and then he had to crawl through a whiteness as dense as that terrible billowing mist that rolls down a Scottish mountain. Here and there pin-points of fire shone out, changed swiftly on approach into objects like long hair aflame in the wind, and, nearer still, stood revealed as tall fog flares shooting up in fire from metal standards.
At the terminus I watched the drivers dismount, stiff and cold, pull off their big gloves, and hit their cold hands across their chests. Wet particles of fog shone on their moustaches.
Pretty bad at Camden Town, and Baker Street was like a tunnel! Couldn't see a yard at Brixton. Fine and clear at the Crystal Palace.... So these adventurers of the London fog compared notes before, groping in remote recesses, they found money to buy coffee from a stall. Then a whistle, the roar of a chilled engine, and off again on their perilous pilgrimages across London.
Surely every man who has driven through fog with eyes that ache and imagine phantoms at each cross-road will be glad to raise his hat to the bulky figure behind the wheel of a London omnibus as he steers his living cargo to safety with no thought of praise because—it's all in the day's work?
Under the Dome
I was cheered to find that St. Paul's looked quite firm and permanent when I walked up Ludgate Hill the other morning. How deceptive are the works of man! Who would have guessed that this mountain was feeling its age a bit, moving ever so slightly under the weight of its Dome?
The pigeons wheeled in flight. A girl stood covered in them, while less bold birds walked, nodding quickly, round her feet pecking crumbs. Up the fine, bold sweep of the steps walked many people. I think that they were perhaps Londoners paying their first visit, hoping that they would get it over before the cathedral collapsed, for they looked up warily as they advanced as though alarmed by accounts of splitting piers, and then, finding nothing unusual, they went on their way, maybe surprised to find no cant to the Dome or any visible fissure!
As I walked over the black and white diamonds of the nave I realized that although I have attended services normal and national in St. Paul's I had never climbed to the Whispering Gallery. When Americans had talked to me about it I had lied and had pretended that I knew it. So I determined to wipe out my shame.