Publisher's Synopsis
The bewildering scene always reminds me of the art student I once saw painting it from the steps of the gallery; and I thought then that if the actors on the great stage in front of her could have seen the hopeless condition of her canvas and her pale, worried face they might have stood still for awhile. But the panorama has never stopped, and the only quiet figures in Trafalgar Square are its bronze statues. There you will see country boys looking, with admiring envy, at the smart uniforms of the soldiers, and with terror at the dingy army of sandwich-men shuffling through the gutter carrying advertisements of hot and cold luncheons, Turkish baths, manicure parlors, and places of amusement, serving, at the same time, as awful examples of what will happen to all those who do not take the sergeant's advice and become soldiers. Even some of the street beggars are familiar. The' old rat-man and his pets find Brighton too dull in the winter, and come up to London for the season, to mix once more in its streets, where all kinds of horses are driven by as great a variety of men, from the pedlerto the powdered-wigged coachman. Cable-cars and trolleys would be sadly out of place in London, and horseless carriages would be a calamity. There should be no need to go faster than a horse can trot, and the best way of all is to walk.
