For most of the day and all night the shop windows
were lit by electric light, and many establishments had made, as it
were, canals of public footpaths through their premises in order to
increase their window space.
Barnet made his way along this night-scene rather apprehensively since
the police had power to challenge and demand the Labour Card of any
indigent-looking person, and if the record failed to show he was in
employment, dismiss him to the traffic pavement below.
But there was still enough of his former gentility about Barnet's
appearance and bearing to protect him from this; the police, too, had
other things to think of that night, and he was permitted to reach the
galleries about Leicester Square--that great focus of London life and
pleasure.
He gives a vivid description of the scene that evening. In the centre
was a garden raised on arches lit by festoons of lights and connected
with the Rows by eight graceful bridges, beneath which hummed the
interlacing streams of motor traffic, pulsating as the current
alternated between east and west and north and south. Above rose great
frontages of intricate rather than beautiful reinforced porcelain,
studded with lights, barred by bold illuminated advertisements, and
glowing with reflections.
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