THE FOG

Evening Star, Issue 19785, 8 February 1928, Page 12

THE FOG

WILL LONDON EVER GET BELIEF? They say that in the year 10-10 such blacks and such yellows will he no more seen. Electricity will be sold for a. penny farthing a. unit—at that price it will warm every home in London. Onr little houses will not need to light their little fires with coal and sticks and paper. There will be no smoke of coal to come out from the chimneys and darken flic mist, writes “Londoner” in flic ‘Evening News. 1 But the year ,1940 is still a long way up the road. I. think that, even in that glad year the logs will come. London is paved and drained and lighted ; much has been done for our comfort since London was first a market town. But it was a market town on the low hill beside the river; the dank marshes lay about it. The white fog was here before ever there was any buying and selling in a London market. London may be covered with houses and with paving stones; it will yet remember, in in the season of fogs, how much of it was ancient marsh and fen. The pale fog shall take even those lucky citizens who shall be living in 1940, lor all their magic fires that will give out no whiff of smoke. Compared with the woe of the cast wind or with the woe of rain a fog is a light affliction. How pleasantly it transfigures common sights! There arc streets through which a man might pass and not be tempted to look up and about him. Wrapped in fog, seen dimly in that cloak of darkness, these may be stately buildings, picturesque as any ruinous castle, sombre and terrible as the haunted grange that lies within the moat. In the fog (he clamor of advertisements is silent. The new haste is checked; the swiftest car, the boldest of the rattling lorries, must go at a foot pace. An ancient peace holds the town. Coming home slowly, stepping with care, you turn into your own byway and walk as a man walks through the. dark wood after dusk, ft is with a. feeling of one who has lived adventurously that, you reach your doorstep with your tale of omnibuses that are not running, of halting trains that creep on 'tho rails.