WINTER IN LONDON.

Gisborne Times, Volume XVII, Issue 1350, 10 January 1905, Page 2

WINTER IN LONDON.

London, Nov. 23. Winter began in London last Tuesday morning. The calendars may not say so, but one realised the fact at once on getting out of bed.. The temperature was down below freezing point; the first snow of the season covered the ground outside, and a biting wind from the eastward sent the shivering Londoners crouching over their fires. Ths snow-fall in the metropolis was a mild affair, however, oompared with the huge drifts experienced in Sootland and the North of England. [ln some places the blizzard which raged on Tuesday and Wednesday is reckoned to be the worst that has been known for thirty years, Trains have been snowed-up, hamlets isolated, telegraph wires blown down, and trade dislocated all over the kingdom. In London the snow has given casual employment to several hundred “ out-of-works ” in cleaning up the pavementß, but, on tho other hand, it must have thrown something like ten thousand artisans temporarily out of work. To the poor, and especially to the homeless, such weather as we have had this week is a dreadful penance. ” A green yule makes a fat kirkyard,” runs tho old saying ; but a white yule also olaims a heavy toll of suffering and death. One of the papers seeks consolation in the reflection that the rigors of the English olimato have made the race the hardiest colonists in tho world. “ The English woather,” it deolares, “is the real founder of the British Empire.” On that reasoning we may look forward to seeing the Laplanders or the Patagonians inherit tho earth !

London snow soon rosolves itself into London slush —a fearsome compound which must be waded through to be appreciated. It soaks your boots, spatters your clothes, spoils your clean collar, and converts the asphalt pavement into a malodorous mud-bath. Only in the earliest morning hours, ere the mighty stream of traffio has stained the white radiance of the snow-mantle, does London wear that look of peaceful serenity whioh you see on froßted Christmas cards. And yet it has

its picturesque moments even at the height of a November blizzard. When the theatres pour forth their thousands into the blackness of the night, and snow flake? swirl and danoe in the rays of the arclamps, falling in silvery spangles on the gay opera ploaks of the ladies ; when every ’busman and cab-driver iB for .the nonce a snow man, gleaming white as to hat, beard and apron ; when travellers on the ’bustops sit ill at ease, on cushions of the same beautiful white snow, and pedestrians measure their length in the midst of it — why, then the scene is picturesque enough, and eo, for that matter, is the language 1 I think Tom Hood hit off the conditions of ft November day in London as anyone. Let me quote a couple of his verses :

No sun—no moon ! No morn—no noon— No dawn—no dusk —no proper time of dßy No sky—no earthly view—No distance looking blue— No road —no street — : no “ t’othr side the way ”

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease—' - No comfortable feel in any member. No shade, no shine, no buttorflios, no bees, No fruit, no flowers, no birds, no leaves, No-vember t —Star Correspondent.