HASTE TO THE WEDDING

St George's, Hanover Square (named in honour of George I.), scene of fashionable marriages in the nineteenth century,

A TEEMING POPULACE

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long before one gets a bit of real country — it seems to be all London for a long, long time, and one thinks of the lines in the comic song:

With a ladder and some glasses

You could see the 'Ackney Marshes

If it wasn't for the 'ouses in between.

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Yes: what a dense multitude of houses and streets, before one breathes the fresh country air and sees the unclouded sky! sky! And then the people --not only those who live in London, but also thousands who come up to Town each week-day to their work in the City and elsewhere! It is a marvellous sight to stand in the morning on the arrival platform of any one of our larger railway stations, and watch the seemingly never-ending stream of men and women going to work or pleasure. Train after train comes in, and disgorges its freight of humanity in an absolutely bewildering manner. I think Mr Gladstone said that the population was the riches of a country. Then, truly, we are rich indeed. And we are all in such a hurry, too-except the fat old lady with her numerous small packages, who, when one is in haste oneself, invariably takes the opportunity of establishing herself and her impedimenta in the narrow gangway one has to pass through to one's train.