LUDGATE HILL AND ITS TOYS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 14, 10 February 1909, Page 4

LUDGATE HILL AND ITS TOYS

AX OLD MARKET-PLACE ABOLISHED AT LAST. London, December 2">. Many New Zealauders over here just now miss an old and interesting sight, one that hardly lias its parallel in any city in Europe. The Santa Clans of the Clutter has been "moved on" by the stern guardiiins of the law. The glory of Ludgate Hill is departed. A week ago ami it ivas, as it has been every year for many years, a verv goblin market. Now it' is all •business and desolation. The toys are gone. A week or so ago and you jostled leisurely through a happy, adliesive crowd, wire re no one was in. a hurry. Now you light your way along in an unholy throng of hustlers. A man must have the heart of a Scrooge not to regret the toys. Still you cannot blame the police. When you have palpitating, perambulating battering rams like motor 'buses sliding and slewing down the roadway there is no longer room for what was possible in the happy ohl days of the "knifeboard." The traffic grows and grows, and the superficial area of Ludgate Hill stands still. A'nd now, if nature of necessity moves you on, you may canter from end to cud of tin, gutter'of Ludgate Hill, and the motor-'bus finds no more encroaching crowds to tempt its homicidal instincts. Hut, alas! what have we lost.! For so long a time that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, the hawkers of toys have made their Christinas market on Ludgate Hill. Last year, for the first time, thev were, moved on: Ibis year the trageilv is performed again, and it becomes part of the orders of things that Christmas in the city is to look like ally other day. And if we were not all worshippers of the great gnd Hustle (lie dark streets might still be a fantasy of dreams and fairyland. The other day as one wandered llirougli the line of their ..littering, gaudy trays, the shrill hawkers were worth an artist's study. Here was a wrinkled, white-haired grandmother, whom Eeinlrmndt might have sought, here a cleanlimbed, lithe lad, ruddy and vigorous, who must surely belong to hill and moorland, and not to the dingy alleys of the town. Then you came upon swarthy, dark-eyed folk, with strange, delicate hands, and fragile shoulders, creatures of the distant mystery of the Hast. Xow. it was some quaint gamin of the Loudon streets keeping up si sham quarrel with bis neighbors and chuffing the crowd. And now n man, broken and seared with disease and poverty, yet bearing still some of the marks of gentle breeding and culture, hinted nt some strange, hopeless tragedy. Wlnit miserable memories, heart-killing memories, perchance, of happy, honoured days, of kind friends, and of relations, long since passed away, were haunting him as he stood in the gutter with bowed head, silent and sorrowful, amid live eager yells and mirthful jest of commerce., offering his humble tray of grotesque toys? Well, the order ehangetli, and they are all gone! They still ply their trade, but by ones and two in ilill'ercnt streets, and the children's fairyland of Ludgate. Bill is no more.