Once I remember seeing in an obscure corner a twist of dear old houses built before George III was king, and on the corner of this row was painted "Kipling Street: late Nelson Street."
Upon another occasion I went to a little Norman market town up among the hills, where one of the smaller squares was called "The Place of the Three Mad Nuns," and when I got there after so many years and was beginning to renew my youth I was struck all of a heap to see a great enamelled blue and white affair upon the walls. They had renamed the triangle. They had called it "The Place Victor Hugo"!
However, all you who love Crooked Streets, I bid you lift up your hearts. There is no power on earth that can make man build Straight Streets for long. It is a bad thing, as a general rule, to prophesy good or to make men feel comfortable with the vision of a pleasant future; but in this case I am right enough. The Crooked Streets will certainly return.
Let me boldly borrow a quotation which I never saw until the other day, and that in another man's work, but which, having once seen it, I shall retain all the days of my life.
"Oh, passi graviora, dabit Deus his quoque finem," or words to that effect. I can never be sure of a quotation, still less of scansion, and anyhow, as I am deliberately stealing it from another man, if I have changed it so much the better.
XIX THE PLACE APART
Little pen, be good and flow with ink (which you do not always do) so that I may tell you what came to me once in a high summer and the happiness I had of it.
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