AIL night Jong London provinces were moving. Boots, boots, boots—you heard them tramping West End wards as you tried to get hour oF two of sleep before turning out. yourself, Yet the trains about for 5 am. were not unduly crowded, People told me that at the Jubilee more people were in evidence. It may be but there seemed fo me more than enough" when one struggled from the Tube escalators and began to walk to one's seal.
'AUG o'clock the bulk of the crowd were in their positions. Unfortunately the authorities seemed to have for~ rotten the fact since there was little of nothing to alleviate the terrible Wail." The papers asserted that bands of music were dotted about. They were not. In Pall Mall the R.A. Band marched twice each way and tone other band as the troops fled forth to take up the guarding of the route, played a march—say six or seven minutes in all, spread over as many hours The crowd, patient and lens-suffer= ing, was bored stiff and towards noon it got very tired. That was just the moment to turn on some exhilarating mise, Alas there was none—no, Found for hours but the droning of the broadcasts of the Abbey Coro-many which while effective enough inside buildings was largely a failure outside. TI was impossible to follow proceedings in detail pretend to speak as an expert, but the exquisite detail and accurate drawing which are indispensable with pencil, pen-and-ink and engrave ing seem always {o stimulate our artists 10 their best effects. And there is also no question of their felicity in the use of water-colour.
The aflernoon's plelure-secing was not finished when T went into an adjoining Lyons to take a cup of tea and the weight off my feet. At the next table a fair haired girl, with vivid blue eyes and an old black tam-o-shanter, was" eating an ice, with a sort of desperate defiance. Whether the ice war too cold, or she was mentally telling some one where they got off, I cannot say, but she was undoubied: y a picture.
'Of course she knew she was being stared al,.and suddenly che began to hunt for' something In her bag. Was she going to drop a discreet. visiting card by my table? Even the aged ced not despair of adventures In his large-hearted London.
And then she produced some money, paid for her ice and departed. wish Gerald Brockhurst seen her. He would certainly have wade of her a com anion picture to his Merle Oberon.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.