Shanghai people are apt to think that they are alone in their difficulties over the vagaries of street numbering. But it isn't so, as this letter from a Londoner shows In many of our large cities, certainly in London, if househoiaers were canvassed as to which was the more erying need, revision of street names or of the numbering of street houses, it is difficult not to think that the popular vote would go to the latter.
In London it often seems as if the numbering had been devised to give as much trouble as possible, so that the hunt for a house one has to visit for the first time is often rather like tackling a crossword puzzle; moreover, a puzzle devised on a new principle. No discernible rule exists and each street goes its own sweet way. Sometimes the odd numbers run along one side and the even along the other, sometimes not. There may be nur bers round a corner which yet pu port to belong to the street in question.
Some houses or, anyhow, doorw will be omitted from the numbering scheme; others show a name such as The Cedars dimly engraved upon a fanlight or gatepost. Many numbers faced wholly or in part. A, archer may be stymied by ne figures 1 and 300 both at th:
end at opposite corners This may be good for the ov axi-meters—for taxi-drivers may be nor ant of the ways of any particul street as the desperate guest seated within. But it is not good for tempers, for shoe leather, for best clothes on a wet, dark night, or for dinners kept waiting while the game proceeds, Street names in London have lately been altered, and there are loudly vocal differences of opinion as to the benefit of such alteration to ordi ry people. The numbers still remai: haphazard and obscure. One thing i open to those who wish their visite to have the maximum of guidance. now buy either letters or ers of moulded glass at 9d. a unit.
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Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.