* * *
Here it has remained beside the Thames, with the last great adventure still in store. One night the wrath of Ra, the fury of Set, the god of evil, descended like thunderbolts from a dark sky. Chips of the granite pediment flew away. The plinth was bruised as a city is bruised in war, and overhead in the shaft of a searchlight lay a silver fish in the sky—a fish that hummed like a hornet and laid most devilish eggs. What a strange night for ancient Egypt....
* * *
Sad, cold stone—the saddest monument in all London. We are killing it. It was once red granite. Now it is coal black and its glory is being eaten away year by year. Forty-seven years of London have done it greater hurt than the three thousand years that went before. It did not deserve this; for round it centres the splendour and glory of the past and under its feet is a message for the future.
And it seems to me that its experienced black finger is pointing to something which may make you laugh or cry.
Sun or Snow
Victoria Station is every morning the scene of a daily romance—the departure of the Continental boat expresses. When the fog comes and the rain and the driving sleet, and every Londoner loathes London just a little, I can extract a certain pale kind of pleasure by buying a penny platform ticket and watching other people start off to the snow or the sun.
I can never decide whether the act of extracting enjoyment from other people's luck is the lowest or the highest form of fun. There is always a sting in the tail of it.
* * *