THROUGH A LONDON FOG.

Otago Witness, Issue 2812, 5 February 1908, Page 81

THROUGH A LONDON FOG.

One of the most singular and entertaining incidents connected with a London fog happened on November 15, 1885, when a link^boy at the top of Chancery lane offered -his services to a young woman to conduct her to Euston Station. The boy seemed to have a. feline, a preternatural, sense of locality, for he wourrdr his way in one of the thickest fogs fox years — slowly, it is true, but surely—^through alleys and thoroughfares unfrequented by pedestrians in fine weather. According to the evidence furnished afterwards, at the corner of a street turning out of Holborn, two benighted Germans, seeing the torch and hearing the .name "Euston" pronounced, joined the escort. At Red Lion a lady and her" son, a Haileybury boy, who had given: themselves up for lost, followed the Germane as a- last hope of getting into Oxford street. - A few yards further on the schoolboy took notice of a large greyhound, which had apparently lost its master attached itself to the party, which was shortly swelled at Southampton row by a belated gentleman and a flower girl whom he had found weeping bitterly on a doorstep. At Russell square a couple of homeless outcasts joined the procession. The progress' from Chancery lane to Euston road occupied nearly 50 minutes. By the end of that time the fog iifted as -if by magic and revealed to the astonished linkboy, who had bargained to guide a single- little nursery governess for the sum. of eightpence, no fewer than 29 persons who had looked to him for light and leading through the unknown terrors, pitfalls, and dangers of a London fog. — Strand Magazine.