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Starting Out with Visual C#®
Fifth Edition

Tony Gaddis

Haywood Community College

Senior Vice President Courseware Portfolio Management: Marcia J.
Horton

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Copyright © 2020 by Pearson Education, Inc. or its affiliates. All Rights

Reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication is

protected by copyright, and permission should be obtained from the

publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval

system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic,

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regarding permissions, request forms and the appropriate contacts within

the Pearson Education Global Rights & Permissions department, please

visit www.pearsoned.com/permissions.

Acknowledgements of third party content appear the same page as the

content, which constitutes an extension of this copyright page. Unless

otherwise indicated herein, any third-party trademarks that may appear

in this work are the property of their respective owners and any

references to third-party trademarks, logos or other trade dress are for

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The programs and applications presented in this book have been included

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guaranteed for any particular purpose. The publisher does not offer any
warranties or representations, nor does it accept any liabilities with

respect to the programs or applications.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gaddis, Tony, author.

Title: Starting out with visual C# / Tony Gaddis, Haywood Community

College.

Description: Fifth edition. | Hoboken, NJ : Pearson, [2020] | Includes

index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018048218 | ISBN 9780135183519 | ISBN 0135183510

Subjects: LCSH: C# (Computer program language) | Visual programming

languages (Computer science)

Classification: LCC QA76.73.C154 G33 2019 | DDC 005.1/18--dc23 LC

record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018048218

ISBN 10: 0-13-518351-0

ISBN 13: 978-0-13-518351-9

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Locations of VideoNotes
www.pearson.com/cs-resources
Chapter 1 
Tutorial 1-1: Starting Visual Studio and Setting Up the Environment 28 

Tutorial 1-2: Starting a New Visual C# Project 30 

Tutorial 1-3: Saving and Closing a Project 32 

Tutorial 1-4: Opening an Existing Project 40 

Tutorial 1-5: Getting Familiar with the Visual Studio Environment 41 

Chapter 2 

Tutorial 2-1: Creating the GUI for the Hello World Application 61 

Tutorial 2-2: Writing Code for the Hello World Application 75 

Tutorial 2-3: Creating the Language Translator Application 86 

Tutorial 2-4: Creating the Flags Application 94 

Tutorial 2-5: Creating the Card Flip Application 98 

Solving the Clickable Number Images Problem 113 

Chapter 3 
Tutorial 3-1: The Birth Date String Application 126 

Tutorial 3-2: Calculating Fuel Economy 147 

Tutorial 3-3: Creating the Sale Price Calculator Application with Currency

Formatting 153 

Tutorial 3-4: Creating the Test Average Application with Exception Handling 161 

Tutorial 3-5: Creating the Change Counter Application 170 

 Tutorial 3-6: Single-stepping through an Application’s Code at Runtime 186 

Solving the Tip, Tax, and Total Problem 196 

Chapter 4 
Tutorial 4-1: Completing the Test Score Average Application 206 

Tutorial 4-2: Completing the Payroll with Overtime Application 212 

Tutorial 4-3: Completing the Loan Qualifier Application 218 

Tutorial 4-4: Calculating Fuel Economy 241 

Tutorial 4-5: Creating the Color Theme Application 250 

Tutorial 4-6: Creating the Time Zone Application 257 

Solving the Mass and Weight Problem 266 

Chapter 5 
Tutorial 5-1: Using a Loop to Calculate an Account Balance 277 

Tutorial 5-2: Enhancing the Ending Balance Application 280 

Tutorial 5-3: Using the for Loop 290 

Tutorial 5-4: Writing Data to a Text File 301 

Tutorial 5-5: Appending Data to the Friend.txt File 306 

Tutorial 5-6: Using a Loop to Read to the End of a File 314 

Tutorial 5-7: Calculating a Running Total 318 

Tutorial 5-8: Simulating Coin Tosses 328 

Tutorial 5-9: Creating a Load Event Handler 333 

Solving the Celsius to Fahrenheit Table Problem 340 

Chapter 6 
 Tutorial 6-1: Creating and Calling Methods 349 

Tutorial 6-2: Passing an Argument to a Method 356 

Tutorial 6-3: Using an Output Parameter 367 

Tutorial 6-4: Writing a Value-Returning Method 376 

Tutorial 6-5: Modularizing Input Validation with a Boolean Method 379 

Tutorial 6-6: Practicing the Step Into Command 385 

Tutorial 6-7: Practicing the Step Over Command 386 

Tutorial 6-8: Practicing the Step Out Command 387 

Solving the Kinetic Energy Problem 392 

Chapter 7 
Tutorial 7-1: Using an Array to Hold a List of Random Lottery Numbers 407 

Tutorial 7-2: Processing an Array 432 

Tutorial 7-3: Completing the Seating Chart Application 447 

Tutorial 7-4: Completing the Test Score List Application 460 

Tutorial 7-5: Completing the Random Card Application 467 

Solving the Total Sales Problem 474 

Chapter 8 
Tutorial 8-1: Completing the Password Validation Application 485 

Tutorial 8-2: Completing the Telephone Format Application 498 

Tutorial 8-3: Completing the Telephone Unformat Application 502 

Tutorial 8-4: Completing the CSV Reader Application 509 

Solving the Sum of Numbers in a String Problem 522 

Chapter 9 
Tutorial 9-1: Completing the Phonebook Application 535 

Tutorial 9-2: Completing the Color Spectrum Application 552 

Tutorial 9-3: Storing Names and Birthdays in a Dictionary 564 

Tutorial 9-4: Using a Dictionary to Simulate a Deck of Cards 566 

Solving the Course Information Problem 578 

Chapter 10 
Tutorial 10-1: Creating and Using the Coin Class 588 

Tutorial 10-2: Creating and Using the CellPhone Class 598 

Tutorial 10-3: Creating and Using the BankAccount Class 603 

Tutorial 10-4: Completing the Cell Phone Inventory Application 612 

Tutorial 10-5: Creating an Application with Two Forms 630 

Tutorial 10-6: Accessing a Control on a Different Form 635 

Tutorial 10-7: Creating a Simple Logging Utility with a Static Class: 643 

Solving the Pet Class Problem 652 

Chapter 11 
Tutorial 11-1: Creating and Testing the SavingsAccount and CDAccount

Classes 664 

Tutorial 11-2: Completing the Polymorphism Application 677 

Tutorial 11-3: Completing the Computer Science Student Application 684 

Solving the Employee and Production–Worker Classes Problem 712 

Chapter 12 
 Tutorial 12-1: Starting the Phone Book Application and Creating the Phonelist.mdf
Database 721 

Tutorial 12-2: Completing the Phone Book Application 729 

Tutorial 12-3: Creating the Products Application and Using a Details View 738 

Tutorial 12-4: Creating the Product Lookup Application 749 

Tutorial 12-5: Creating the Multiform Products Application 752 

Tutorial 12-6: Creating the Product Queries Application 764 

Tutorial 12-7: Creating the Product Queries Application 773 

Tutorial 12-8: Creating the Product Search Application 777 

Solving the Personnel Database Problem 787 

Chapter 13 
Tutorial 13-1: Working with List Methods and Lambdas 811 

Solving the List Manipulator Problem 818 

Chapter 14 
Tutorial 14-1: Completing the Student Roster Application 827 

Tutorial 14-2: Modifying the Student Roster Application 835 

Tutorial 14-3: Completing the Team Player Application 849 

Tutorial 14-4: Completing the Phonelist Names Application 859 

Tutorial 14-5: Completing the Product Reports Application 864 

Tutorial 14-6: Completing the QueryDataSource Application 871 

Solving the Unique Words Problem 881 

Brief Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction to Computers and Programming 1 

Chapter 2 Introduction to Visual C# 51 

Chapter 3 Processing Data 117 

Chapter 4 Making Decisions 201 

Chapter 5 Loops, Files, and Random Numbers 271 

Chapter 6 Modularizing Your Code with Methods 343 

Chapter 7 Arrays and Lists 397 

Chapter 8 Text Processing 479 

Chapter 9 Structures, Enumerated Types, and Dictionaries 525 

Chapter 10 Introduction to Classes 581 

Chapter 11 Inheritance, Polymorphism, and Interfaces 655 

Chapter 12 Databases 715 

Chapter 13 Delegates, Anonymous Methods, and Lambda Expressions 789 

Chapter 14 Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) 821 

Appendix A C# Primitive Data Types 883 

Appendix B Additional User Interface Controls 885 

Appendix C ASCII/Unicode Characters 905 

Appendix D Answers to Checkpoint Questions 907 

Appendix E Installing LINQ to SQL Classes in Visual Studio 929 

Index 931 
Contents
Preface xiii 

Attention Students xx 

Chapter 1 Introduction to Computers and Programming 1 

1.1 Introduction 1 

1.2 Hardware and Software 2 

1.3 How Computers Store Data 7 

1.4 How a Program Works 11 

1.5 Graphical User Interfaces 18 

1.6 Objects 21 

1.7 The Program Development Process 23 

1.8 Getting Started with the Visual Studio Environment 27 

Tutorial 1-1: Starting Visual Studio and Setting Up the Environment 28 

Tutorial 1-2: Starting a New Visual C# Project 30 

Tutorial 1-3: Saving and Closing a Project 32 

Tutorial 1-4: Opening an Existing Project 40 

Tutorial 1-5: Getting Familiar with the Visual Studio Environment 41 

Key Terms 43 

Review Questions 44 

Programming Problems 49 

Chapter 2 Introduction to Visual C# 51 

 2.1 Getting Started with Forms and Controls 51 

2.2 Creating the GUI for Your First Visual C# Application: The Hello World

Application 60 

Tutorial 2-1: Creating the GUI for the Hello World Application 61 

2.3 Introduction to C# Code 65 

2.4 Writing Code for the Hello World Application 75 

Tutorial 2-2: Writing Code for the Hello World Application 75 

2.5 Label Controls 78 

Tutorial 2-3: Creating the Language Translator Application 86 

2.6 Making Sense of IntelliSense 89 

2.7 PictureBox Controls 90 

Tutorial 2-4: Creating the Flags Application 94 

Tutorial 2-5: Creating the Card Flip Application 98 

2.8 Comments, Blank Lines, and Indentation 102 

2.9 Writing the Code to Close an Application’s Form 104 

2.10 Dealing with Syntax Errors 105 

Key Terms 107 

Review Questions 107 

Programming Problems 112 

Chapter 3 Processing Data 117 

3.1 Reading Input with TextBox Controls 117 

3.2 A First Look at Variables 120 

Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
 II—THE EGOIST

A
little boy, aged about eight, with nearly all his front teeth
gone, came down early for breakfast this morning while I was
having mine. He asked me where the waiters were, and rang.
When one arrived, the little boy discovered that he could speak no
French. However, the waiter said “Café?” and he said “One”; but he
told me that he also wanted buns. While breakfasting, he said to me
that he had got up early because he was going down into the town
that morning by the Funicular, as his mother was to buy him his
Christmas present, a silver lever watch. He said: “I hate to be
hurried for anything. Now, at home, I have to go to school, and I get
up early so that I shan’t be hurried, but my breakfast is always late;
so I have too much time before breakfast, and nothing to do, and
too little time after breakfast when I’ve a lot to do.” In answer to my
question, he said gravely that he was going into the Navy. He knew
the exam, was very stiff, and that if you failed at a certain age you
were barred out altogether; and he asked me whether I thought it
was better to try the exam, early with only a little preparation, or to
leave it late with a long preparation. He thought the first course was
the best, because you could go in again if you failed. I asked him if
he didn’t want some jam. He said no, because the butter was so
good, and if he had jam he wouldn’t be able to taste the butter. He
then rang the bell for more milk, and explained to me that he
couldn’t drink coffee strong, and the consequence was that he had a
whole lot of coffee left and no milk to drink it with.. . . He said he
lived in London, and that some shops down in the town were better
than London shops. By this time a German had descended. He and I
both laughed. But the child stuck to his point. We asked him: “What
shops?” He said that jerseys and watches were nicer in the town
than in London. In this he was right, and we had to admit it. As a
complete résumé, he said that there were fewer things in the town
than in London, but some of the things were nicer. Then he
explained to the German his early rising, and added an alternative
explanation, namely, that he had been sent to bed at 6.45, whereas
7.15 was his legal time.
Later in the day I asked him if he would come down early again
to-morrow and have breakfast with me. He said: “I don’t know. I
shall see.” There was no pose in this. Simply a perfect preoccupation
with his own interests and welfare. I should say he is absolutely
egotistic. He always employs natural, direct methods to get what he
wants and to avoid what lie doesn’t want.
I met him again a few afternoons later on the luge-track. He was
very solemn. He said he had decided not to go in for the single-luge
race, as it all depended on weight. I said: “Put stones in your
pocket. Eat stones for breakfast.”
He laughed slightly and uncertainly. “You can’t eat stones for
breakfast,” he said. “I’m getting on fine at skating. I can turn round
on one leg.”
“Do you still fall?” (He was notorious for his tumbles.)
“Yes.”
“How often?”
He reflected. Then: “About twelve times an hour.... If I skated all
day and all night I should fall twelve twelves—144, isn’t it?”
I said it would be twenty-four twelves.
“Oh! I see——”
“Two hundred and——”
“Eighty-eight,” he overtook me quickly. “But I didn’t mean that. I
meant all day and all night, you know—‘evening. People don’t
generally skate all through the night, do they?” Pause. “Six from 144
—138, isn’t it? I’ll say 138, because you’d have to take half an hour
off for dinner, wouldn’t you?”
He became silent, discussing seriously within himself whether half
an hour would suffice for dinner, without undue hurrying.
 III—THE BLAND WANDERER

I
n the drawing-room to-night an old and solitary, but blandly
cheerful, female wanderer recounted numerous accidents at St.
Moritz: legs broken in two places, shoulders broken, spines
injured; also deaths. Further, the danger of catching infectious
diseases at St. Moritz. “One very large hotel, where everybody had
influenza,” etc. These recitals seemed to give her calm and serious
pleasure.
“Do you think this place is good for nerves?” she broke out
suddenly at me. I told her that in my opinion a hot bath and a day in
bed would make any place good for nerves. “I mean the nerves of
the body,” she said inscrutably. Then she deviated into a long set
description of the historic attack of Russian influenza which she had
had several years ago, and which had kept her in bed for three
months, since when she had’ never been the same woman. And she
seemed to savour with placid joy the fact that she had never since
been the same woman.
Then she flew back to St. Moritz and the prices thereof. She said
you could get pretty reasonable terms, even there, “provided you
didn’t mind going high up.” Upon my saying that I actually preferred
being high up, she exclaimed: “I don’t. I’m so afraid of fire. I’m
always afraid of fire.” She said that she had had two nephews at
Cambridge. The second one took rooms at the top of the highest
house in Cambridge, and the landlord was a drunkard. “My sister
didn’t seem to care, but I didn’t know what to do! What could I do?
Well, I bought him a. non-inflammable rope.” She smiled blandly.
This allusion to death and inebriety prompted a sprightly young
Yorkshirewoman, with the country gift for yarn-spinning, to tell a tale
of something that had happened to her cousin, who gave lessons in
domestic economy at a London Board School. A little girl, absent for
two days, was questioned as to the reason.
“I couldn’t come.”
“But why not?”
“I was kept.. . Please ‘m, my mother’s dead.”
“Well, wouldn’t you be better here at school? When did she die?”
“Yesterday. I must go back, please. I only came to tell you.”
“But why?”
“Well, ma’am. She’s lying on the table and I have to watch her.”
“Watch her?”
“Yes. Because when father comes home drunk, he knocks her off,
and I have to put her on again.”
This narration startled even the bridge-players, and there were
protests of horror. But the philosophic wanderer, who had never
been the same woman since Russian influenza, smiled placidly.
“I knew something really much more awful than that,” she said. “A
young woman, well-known to me, had charge of a crèche of thirty
infants, and one day she took it into her head to amuse herself by
changing all their clothes, so that at night they could not be
identified; and many of them never were identified! She was such a
merry girl! I knew all her brothers and sisters too! She wanted to go
into a sisterhood, and she did, for a month. But the only thing she
did there—well, one day she went down into the laundry and taught
all the laundry-maids to polka. She was such a merry girl!”
She smiled with extraordinary simplicity.
“In the end,” the bland wanderer continued, after a little pause,
“she went to America. America is such an odd place! Once I got into
a car at Philadelphia that had come from New York. The conductor
showed me my berth. The bed was warm. I partly undressed and
got into it, and drew the curtain. I was half asleep, when I felt a
hand feeling me over through the curtain. I called out, and a man’s
voice said: ‘It’s all right. I’m only looking for my stick. I think I must
have left it in the berth’! Another time a lot of student girls were in
the same car with me. They all got into their beds—or berths or
whatever you call it—about eight o’clock, wearing fancy jackets, and
they sat up and ate candy. I was walking up and down, and every
time I passed they implored me to have candy, and then they
implored each other to try to persuade me. They were mostly named
Sadie. At one in the morning they ordered iced drinks ‘round. I was
obliged to drink with them. They tired me out, and then made me
drink. I don’t know what happened just after that, but I know that,
at five in the morning, they were all sitting up and eating candy. I’ve
travelled a good deal in America and it’s such an odd place! It was
just the place for that young woman to go to.”
 IV—ON A MOUNTAIN

L
ast week I did a thing which you may call hackneyed or
unhackneyed, according to your way of life. To some people an
excursion to Hampstead Heath is a unique adventure: to
others, a walk around the summit of Popocatapetl is all in the year’s
work. I went to Switzerland and spent Easter on the top of a
mountain. At any rate, the mountain was less hackneyed at that
season than Rome or Seville, where the price of beds rises in
proportion as religious emotion falls. It was Marcus Aurelius
Antoninus who sent me to the mountain. To mention Marcus
Aurelius is almost as clear a sign of priggish affectation and tenth-
rate preciosity as to quote Omar Khayyam; and I may interject
defensively that I prefer Epictetus, the slave, to Marcus Aurelius, the
neurotic emperor. Still, it was Marcus Aurelius who sent me to the
mountain. He advised me, in certain circumstances, to climb high
and then look down at human nature.
I did so. My luggage alone cost me four francs excess in the
Funicular.

I had before me what I have been told—by others than the hotel
proprietor—is one of the finest panoramas in Europe. Across a
Calvinistic lake, whose renown is familiar to the profane chiefly
because Byron wrote a mediocre poem about a castle on its shores,
rose the five-fanged Dent du Midi, twenty-five miles off, and ten
thousand feet towards the sky; other mountains, worthy companions
of the illustrious Tooth, made a tremendous snowy semicircle right
and left; and I on my mountain fronted this semi-circle. The weather
was perfect.
Down below me, on the edge of the lake, was a continuous chain
of towns, all full and crammed with the final products of civilisation,
miles of them. There was everything in those towns that a nation
whose destiny it is to satisfy the caprices of the English thought the
English could possibly desire. Such things as baths, lifts, fish-knives,
two-steps and rag-times, casinos, theatres, rackets, skates, hot-
water bottles, whisky, beef-steaks, churches, chapels, cameras,
puttees, jig-saws, bridge-markers, clubs, China tea, phonographs,
concert-halls, charitable societies, money-changers, hygiene, picture
post cards, even books—-just cheap ones! It was dizzying to think of
the refined complexity of existence down there. It was impressive to
think of the slow centuries of effort, struggle, discovery and
invention that had gone to the production of that wondrous
civilisation. It was perfectly distracting to think of the innumerable
activities that were proceeding in all parts of the earth (for you could
have coral from India’s coral strand in those towns, and furs from
Labrador, and skates from Birmingham) to keep the vast organism in
working order.
And behind the chain of towns ran the railwayline, along which
flew the expresses with dining-cars and fresh flowers on the tables
of the dining-cars, and living drivers on the footplates of the
engines, whirling the salt of the earth to and fro, threading like
torpedo-shuttles between far-distant centres of refinement. And
behind the railway line spread the cultivated fields of these Swiss,
who, after all, in the intervals of passing dishes to stately guests in
hotel-refectories, have a national life of their own; who indeed have
shown more skill and commonsense in the organisation of posts,
hotels, and military conscription, than any other nation; so much so,
that one gazes and wonders how on earth a race so thick-headed
and tedious could ever have done it.
 I knew that I had all that before me, because I had been among it
all, and had ascended and descended in the lifts, lolled in the
casinos and the trains, and drunk the China tea. But I could not see
it from the top of my mountain. All that I could see from the top of
my mountain was a scattering of dolls’ houses, and that scattering
constituted three towns; with here and there a white cube
overtopping the rest by half an inch, and that white cube was a
grand hotel; and out of the upper face of the cube a wisp of vapour,
and that wisp of vapour was the smoke of a furnace that sent hot-
water through miles of plumbing and heated 400 radiators in 400
elegant apartments; and little stretches of ribbon, and these ribbons
were boulevards bordered with great trees; and a puff of steam
crawling along a fine wire, and that crawling puff was an
international express; and rectangular spaces like handkerchiefs
fresh from a bad laundry, and those handkerchiefs were immense
fields of vine; and a water-beetle on the still surface of the lake, and
that water-beetle was a steamer licensed to carry 850 persons. And
there was silence. The towns were feverishly living in ten thousand
fashions, and made not a sound. Even the express breathed softly,
like a child in another room.
The mountains remained impassive; they were too indifferent to
be even contemptuous. Humanity had only soiled their ankles: I
could see all around that with all his jumping man had not found a
perch higher than their ankles. It seemed to me painfully inept that
humanity, having spent seven years in worming a hole through one
of those mountains, should have filled the newspapers with the
marvels of its hole, and should have fallen into the habit of calling its
hole “the Simplon.” The Simplon—that hole! It seemed to me that
the excellence of Swiss conscription was merely ridiculous in its
exquisite unimportance. It seemed to me that I must have been
absolutely mad to get myself excited about the January elections in
a trifling isle called Britain, writing articles and pamphlets and rude
letters, and estranging friends and thinking myself an earnest
warrior in the van of progress. Land taxes! I could not look down, or
up, and see land taxes as aught but an infantile invention of comic
opera. Two Chambers or one! Veto first or Budget first! Mr. F. E.
Smith or Mr. Steel-Maitland! Ah! The tea-cup and the storm!
The prescription of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus had “acted.”

It is an exceedingly harmful prescription if employed long or often.

Go to the top of a mountain by all means, but hurry down again
quickly. The top of a mountain, instead of correcting your
perspective, as is generally supported by philosophers for whom
human existence is not good enough, falsifies it. Because it induces
self-aggrandisement. You draw illusive bigness from the mountain.
You imagine that you are august, but you are not. If the man below
was informed by telephone that a being august was gazing on him
from above he would probably squint his eyes upwards in the
sunshine and assert with calmness that he couldn’t even see a living
speck on the mountain-crest. You who have gone up had better
come down. You couldn’t remain up twenty-four hours without the
aid of the ant-like evolutions below, which you grandiosely despise.
You couldn’t have got up at all if a procession of those miserable
conceited ants had not been up there before you.
The detached philosophic mountain view of the littleness of things
is a delightful and diverting amusement, and there is perhaps no
harm in it so long as you don’t really act on it. If you begin really to
act on it you at once become ridiculous, and especially ridiculous in
the sight of mountains.
You commit the fatuity of despising the corporate toil which has
made you what you are, and you prove nothing except that you
have found a rather specious and glittering excuse for idleness, for
cowardice, and for having permitted the stuffing to be knocked out
of you.
When I hear a man say, when I hear myself say: “I’m sick of
politics,” I always think: “What you want is six months in prison, or
in a slum, or in a mine, or in a bakehouse, or in the skin of a
woman. After that, we should see if you were sick of politics.” And
when I hear a lot of people together say that they are sick of
politics, then I am quite sure that politics are more than ever
urgently in need of attention. It is at such moments that a man has
an excellent opportunity of showing that he is a man.
ENGLAND AGAIN—1907
 I—THE GATE OF THE EMPIRE

W
hen one comes back to it, after long absence, one sees
exactly the same staring, cold white cliffs under the same
stars. Ministries may have fallen; the salaries of music-hall
artistes may have risen; Christmas boxes may have become a crime;
war balloons may be in the air; the strange notion may have
sprouted that school children must be fed before they are taught:
but all these things are as nothing compared to the changeless fact
of the island itself. You in the island are apt to forget that the sea is
eternally beating round about all the political fuss you make; you are
apt to forget that your 40-h.p. cars are rushing to and fro on a mere
whale’s back insecurely anchored in the Atlantic. You may call the
Atlantic by soft, reassuring names, such as Irish Sea, North Sea, and
silver streak; it remains the Atlantic, very careless of social progress,
very rude.
The ship under the stars swirls shaking over the starlit waves, and
then bumps up against granite and wood, and amid cries ropes are
thrown out, and so one is lashed to the island. Scarcely any
reasonable harbours in this island! The inhabitants are obliged to
throw stones into the sea till they emerge like a geometrical reef,
and vessels cling hard to the reef. One climbs on to it from the
steamer; it is very long and thin, like a sword, and between shouting
wind and water one precariously balances oneself on it. After some
eighty years of steam, nothing more comfortable than the reef has
yet been achieved. But far out on the water a black line may be
discerned, with the silhouettes of cranes and terrific engines. Denied
a natural harbour, the island has at length determined to have an
unnatural harbour at this bleak and perilous spot. In another ten
years or so the peaceful invader will no longer be compelled to fight
with a real train for standing room on a storm-swept reef.
 And that train! Electric light, corridors, lavatories, and general
brilliance! Luxuries inconceivable in the past! But, just to prove a
robust conservatism, hot-water bottles remain as the sole protection
against being frozen to death.
“Can I get you a seat, sir?”
It is the guard’s tone that is the very essence of England. You may
say he descries a shilling on the horizon. I don’t care. That tone
cannot be heard outside England. It is an honest tone, cheerful,
kindly, the welling-up of a fundamental good nature. It is a tone
which says: “I am a decent fellow, so are you; let us do the best for
ourselves under difficulties.” It is far more English than a beefsteak
or a ground-landlord. It touches the returned exile profoundly,
especially at the dreadful hour of four a. m. And in replying, “Yes,
please. Second. Not a smoker,” one is saying, “Hail! Fellow-islander.
You have appalling faults, but for sheer straightness you cannot be
matched elsewhere.”
One comes to an oblong aperture on the reef, something
resembling the aperture of a Punch and Judy show, and not much
larger. In this aperture are a man, many thick cups, several urns,
and some chunks of bread. One struggles up to the man.
“Tea or coffee, sir?”
“Hot milk,” one says.
“Hot milk!” he repeats. You have shocked his Toryism. You have
dragged him out of the rut of tea and coffee, and he does not like it.
However—brave, resourceful fellow!—he pulls himself together for
an immense effort, and gives you hot milk, and you stand there, in
front of the aperture, under the stars and over the sea and in the
blast, trying to keep the cup upright in a mêlée of elbows.
This is the gate, and this the hospitality, of the greatest empire
that, etc.
“Can I take this cup to the train?”
“Certainly, sir!” says the Punch and Judy man genially, as who
should say: “God bless my soul! Aren’t you in the country where
anyone can choose the portmanteau that suits him out of a luggage
van?”
Now that is England! In France, Germany, Italy, there would have
been a spacious golden café and all the drinks on earth, but one
could never have got that cup out of the café without at least a
stamped declaration signed by two commissioners of police and
countersigned by a Consul. One makes a line of milk along the reef,
and sits blowing and sipping what is left of the milk in the train. And
when the train is ready to depart one demands of a porter:
“What am I to do with this cup?”
“Give it to me, sir.”
And he planks it down on the platform next a pillar, and leaves it.
And off one goes. The adventures of that thick mug are a beautiful
demonstration that the new England contains a lot of the old. It will
ultimately reach the Punch and Judy show once more (not broken—
perhaps cracked); not, however, by rules and regulations; but
higgledy-piggledy, by mutual aid and good nature and good will. He
tranquil; it will regain its counter.
 The fringe of villas, each primly asleep in its starlit garden, which
borders the island and divides the hopfields from the Atlantic, is
much wider than it used to be. But in the fields time has stood still..
. . Now, one has left the sea and the storm and the reef, and already
one is forgetting that the island is an island.. . . Warmth gradually
creeps up from the hot-water bottles to one’s heart and eyes, and
sleep comes as the train scurries into the empire.... A loud
reverberation, and one wakes up in a vast cavern, dimly lit, and
sparsely peopled by a few brass-buttoned beings that have the air of
dwarfs under its high, invisible roof. They give it a name, and call it
Charing Cross, and one remembers that, since one last saw it, it fell
down and demolished a theatre. Everything is shuttered in the
cavern. Nothing to eat or to drink, or to read, but shutters. And
shutters are so cold, and caverns so draughty.
“Where can I get something to eat?” one demands.
“Eat, sir?” A staggered pause, and the porter looks at one as if
one were Oliver Twist. “There’s the hotels, sir,” he says, finally.
Yet one has not come by a special, unique train, unexpected and
startling. No! That train knocks at the inner door of the empire every
morning in every month in every year at the same hour, and it is
always met by shutters. And the empire, by the fact of its accredited
representatives in brass buttons and socialistic ties, is always taken
aback by the desire of the peaceful invader to eat.

One wanders out into the frozen silence. Gas lamps patiently
burning over acres of beautiful creosoted wood! A dead cab or so! A
policeman! Shutters everywhere: Nothing else. No change here.
 This is the changeless, ineffable Strand at Charing Cross, sacred
as the Ganges. One cannot see a single new building. Yet they say
London has been rebuilt.
The door of the hotel is locked. And the night watchman opens
with the same air of astonishment as the Punch and Judy man when
one asked for milk, and the railway porter when one asked for food.
Every morning at that hour the train stops within fifty yards of the
hotel door, and pitches out into London persons who have been up
all night; and London blandly continues to be amazed at their arrival.
A good English fellow, the watchman—almost certainly the elder
brother of the train-guard.
“I want a room and some breakfast.”
He cautiously relocks the door.
“Yes, sir, as soon as the waiters are down. In about an hour, sir. I
can take you to the lavatory now, sir, if that will do.”
Who said there was a new England?
One sits overlooking the Strand, and tragically waiting. And
presently, in the beginnings of the dawn, that pathetic, wistful object
the first omnibus of the day rolls along—all by itself—no horses in
front of it! And, after hours, a waiter descends as bright as a pin
from his attic, and asks with a strong German accent whether one
will have tea or coffee. The empire is waking up, and one is in the
heart of it.
 II—AN ESTABLISHMENT

W
hen I returned to England I came across a terrific
establishment. As it may be more or less novel to you I will
attempt to describe it, though the really right words for
describing it do not exist in the English language. In the first place, it
is a restaurant, where meals are served at almost any hour—and not
meals such as you get in ordinary restaurants, but sane meals,
spread amid flowers and diaper. Then it is also a crèche, where
babies are tended upon scientific principles; nothing that a baby
needs is neglected. Older, children are also looked after, and the
whole question of education is deeply studied, and advice given.
Also young men and women of sixteen or so are started in the
world, and every information concerning careers is collected and
freely given out.
Another branch of the establishment is devoted to inexpensive but
effective dressmaking, and still another to hats; here you will find
the periodical literature of fashion, and all hints as to shopping.
There is, further, a very efficient department of mending, highly
curious and ingenious, which embraces men’s clothing. I discovered,
too, a horticultural department for the encouragement of flowers,
serving secondarily as a branch of the crèche and nursery. There is a
fine art department, where reproductions of the great masters are to
be seen and meditated upon, and an applied art department, full of
antiques. It must mention the library, where the latest and the most
ancient literatures fraternise on the same shelves; also the chamber-
music department.
Lastly, a portion of the establishment is simply nothing but an
uncommon lodging-house for travellers, where electric light, hot
water bottles, and hot baths are not extras. I scarcely expect you to
believe what I say; nevertheless I have exaggerated in nothing. You
would never guess where I encountered this extraordinary, this
incredible establishment. It was No. 137 (the final number) in a
perfectly ordinary long street in a residential suburb of a large town.
When I expressed my surprise to the manager of the place, he
looked at me as if I had come from Timbuctoo. “Why!” he
exclaimed, “there are a hundred and thirty-six establishments much
like mine in this very street!” He was right; for what I had stumbled
into was just the average cultivated Englishman’s home.

You must look at it as I looked at it in order to perceive what an

organisation the thing is. The Englishman may totter continually on
the edge of his income, but he does get value for his money. I do
not mean the poor man, for he is too unskilled, and too hampered
by lack of capital, to get value even for what money he has. Nor do I
mean the wealthy man, who usually spends about five-sixths of his
income in acquiring worries and nuisances. I mean the nice, usual
professional or business islander, who by means of a small oblong
piece of paper, marked £30 or so, once a month, attempts and
accomplishes more than a native of the mainland would dream of on
£30 a week. The immense pyramid which that man and his wife
build, wrong side up, on the blowsy head of one domestic servant is
a truly astonishing phenomenon, and its frequency does not impair
its extraordinariness.
The mere machinery is tremendously complex. You lie awake at 6-
30 in the uncommon lodging-house department, and you hear
distant noises. It is the inverted apex of the pyramid starting into
life. You might imagine that she would be intensely preoccupied by
the complexity of her duties, and by her responsibility. Not a bit.
Open her head, and you would find nothing in it but the vision of a
grocer’s assistant and a new frock. You then hear weird bumps and
gurgling noises. It is the hot water running up behind walls to meet
you half-way from the kitchen. You catch the early vivacity of the
crèche. A row overhead means that a young man who has already
studied the comparative anatomy of cigars is embarking on life. A
tinkling of cymbals below—it is a young woman preparing to be
attractive to some undiscovered young man in another street.

The Englishman’s home is assuredly the most elaborate

organisation for sustaining and reproducing life in the world—or at
any rate, east of Sandy Hook. It becomes more and more elaborate,
luxurious, and efficient. For example, illumination is not the most
important of its activities. Yet, you will generally find in it four
different methods of illumination—electricity, gas, a few oil lamps in
case of necessity, and candles stuck about. Only yesterday, as it
seems, human fancy had not got beyond candles. Much the same
with cookery. Even at a simple refection like afternoon tea you may
well have jam boiled over gas, cake baked in the range, and tea kept
hot by alcohol or electricity.
I am not old, but I have known housewives who would neither eat
nor offer to a guest, bread which they had not baked. They drew
water from their own wells. And the idea of a public laundry would
have horrified them. And before that generation there existed a
generation which spun and wove at home. To-day the English
household is dependent on cooperative methods for light, heat,
much food, and several sorts of cleanliness. True (though it has
abandoned baking), the idea of cooperative cookery horrifies it!
However, another generation is coming! And that generation, while
expending no more energy than ourselves, will live in homes more
complicatedly luxurious than ours. When it is house-hunting it will
turn in scorn from an abode which has not a service of hot and cold
water in every bedroom and a steam device for “washing up”
without human fingers. And it will as soon think of keeping a private
orchestra as of keeping a private cook—with her loves and her thirst.

Leave England and come hack, and you cannot fail to see that this
generation is already knocking at the door. When it once gets inside
the door it will probably be more “house-proud,” more inclined to
regard the dwelling as its toy, with which it can never tire of playing,
than even the present generation. Such is a salient characteristic
which strikes the returned traveller, and which the foreigner goes
back to his own country and talks about—namely, the tremendous
and intense pre-occupation of the English home with “comfort”—
with every branch and sub-branch of comfort.
“Le comfort anglais” is a phrase which has passed into the French
language. On spiritual and intellectual matters the Englishman may
be the most sweetly reasonable of creatures—always ready to
compromise, and loathing discussion. But catch him compromising
about his hot-water apparatus, the texture of a beefsteak, or the
flushing of a cistern!
 III—AMUSEMENTS

I
t is when one comes to survey with a fresh eye the amusements
of the English race that one realises the incomprehensibility of
existence. Here is the most serious people on earth—the only
people, assuredly, with a genuine grasp of the principles of political
wisdom—amusing itself untiringly with a play-ball. The ball may be
large and soft, as in football, or small and hard, as in golf, or small
and very hard, as in billiards, or neither one thing nor the other, as
in cricket—it is always a ball.. Abolish the sphere, and the flower of
English manhood would perish from ennui.
The fact is, speaking broadly, there is only one amusement worth
mentioning in England. Football dwarfs all the others. It has outrun
cricket. This is a hard saying, but a true one. Football arouses more
interest, passion, heat; it attracts far vaster crowds; it sheds more
blood. Having beheld England, after absence, in the North and in the
South, I seem to see my native country as an immense football
ground, with a net across the Isle of Wight and another in the
neighbourhood of John o’ Groat’s, and the entire population
stamping their feet on the cold, cold ground and hoarsely roaring at
the bounces of a gigantic football. It is a great game, but watching it
is a mysterious and peculiar amusement, full of contradictions. The
physical conditions of getting into a football ground, of keeping life
in one’s veins while there, and of getting away from it, appear at
first sight to preclude the possibility of amusement. They remind one
of the Crimean War or the passage of the Beresina. A man will
freeze to within half a degree of death on a football ground, and the
same man will haughtily refuse to sit on anything less soft than
plush at a music-hall. Such is the inexplicable virtue of football.
 Further, a man will safely carry his sense of fair play past the gate
of a cricket field, but he will leave it outside the turnstiles of a
football ground. I refer to the relentless refusal of the man amusing
himself at a football match to see any virtue in the other side. I refer
to the howl of execration which can only be heard on a football
ground. English public life is a series of pretences. And the greatest
pretence of all is that football matches are eleven a side. Football
matches are usually a battle between eleven men and ten thousand
and eleven; that is why the home team so seldom loses.
The football crowd is religious, stern, grim, terrible, magnificent. It
is prepared to sacrifice everything to an ideal. And even when its
ideal gets tumbled out of the First League into the Second, it will not
part with a single illusion. There are greater things than justice
(which, after all, is a human invention, and unknown to nature), and
this ferocious idealism is greater than justice. The explanation is that
football is the oldest English game—far older than cricket, and it
“throws back” to the true, deep sources of the English character. It is
a weekly return to the beneficent and heroic simplicity of nature’s
methods.
Another phenomenon of the chief English amusement goes to
show the religious sentiment that underlies it. A leading Spanish
toreador will earn twenty thousand pounds a year. A leading English
jockey will make as much. A music-hall star can lay hands on several
hundreds a week. A good tea-taster receives a thousand a year, and
a cloakroom attendant at a fashionable hotel can always retire at the
age of forty. Now, on the same scale, a great half-back, or a
miraculous goalkeeper with the indispensable gift of being in two
places at once, ought to earn about half a million a year. He is the
idol of innumerable multitudes of enthusiasts; he can rouse them
into heavenly ecstasy, or render them homicidal, with a turn of his
foot. He is the theme of hundreds of newspapers. One town will
cheerfully pay another a thousand pounds for the mere privilege of
his citizenship. But his total personal income would not keep a
stockbroker’s wife in hats! His uniform is the shabbiest uniform ever
donned by a military genius, and he is taught to look forward to the
tenancy of a tied public-house as an ultimate paradise!
To the unimpassioned observer, nothing in English national life
seems more anomalous than this. It can be explained solely by stern
religious sentiment. Call it pagan if you will, but even pagan religions
were religious. The truth is that so foul a thing as money does not
enter into the question. A footballer is treated like a sort of priest.
“You have this rare and incommunicable gift,” says the public to him
in effect. “You can, for instance, do things with your head that the
profane cannot do with their hands. It is no credit to you. You were
born so. Yet a few years, and the gift will leave you I Then we shall
cast you aside and forget you. But, in the meantime, you are like
unto a precious vase. Keep yourself, therefore, holy and uncracked.
There is no money in the career, no luxury, no soft cushions, nothing
but sprained ankles, broken legs, abstinence, suspensions, and a
pittance, followed by ingratitude and neglect. But you have the rare
and incommunicable gift I And that is your exceeding reward.”
In view of such an attitude, to offer the salary of a County Court
judge to a footballer would be an insult.

After indulging in the spectacle and the vocal gymnastics of a

football match, the British public goes home to its wife, hurries her
out, and they stand in the open street at a closed door for an hour,
or it may be two hours, stolidly, grimly, fiercely, with obstinate chins,
on pleasure bent. They are determined to see that door open, no
matter what the weather. Let it rain, let it freeze, they will stand
there till the door opens. At last it does open, and they are so
superbly eager to see what they shall see that they tumble over
each other in order to arrive at the seats of delight. That which they
long to witness with such an ardent longing is usually a scene of
destruction. Let an artiste come forward and simply guarantee to
smash a thousand plates in a quarter of an hour, and he will fill with
enraptured souls the largest music-hall in England. Next to splendid
destruction the British public is most amused by knockabout
comedians, so called because they knock each other about in a
manner which would be fatally tragic to any ordinary persons.
Though this freshly-obtained impression of the amusements of the
folk is perfectly sincere and fair, it is fair also to assert that the folk
shine far more brightly at work and at propaganda than at play. The
island folk, being utterly serious, have not yet given adequate
attention to the amusement of the better part of themselves. But far
up in the empyrean, where culture floats, the directors of the Stage
Society and Miss Horniman are devoting their lives to the question.
 IV—MANCHESTER

O
ver thirty years ago I first used to go to Manchester on
Tuesdays, in charge of people who could remember
Waterloo, and I was taken into a vast and intricate palace,
where we bought quantities of things without paying for them—a
method of acquisition strictly forbidden in our shop. This palace was
called “Rylands.” I knew not what “Rylands” was, but from the
accents of awe in which the name was uttered I gathered that its
importance in the universe was supreme. My sole impression of
Manchester was an impression of extreme noise.
Without shouting you could not make yourself heard in the
streets. Ten years later, London-road Station had somehow become
for me the gate of Paradise, and I was wont to escape into
Manchester as a prisoner escapes into the open country.
After twenty years’ absence in London and Paris I began to revisit
Manchester. My earliest impression will be my last. Still the same
prodigious racket; the same gigantic altercation between irresistible
iron and immovable paving stones! With the addition of the growling
thunder of cars that seem to be continually bumping each other as if
they were college eights! Lunch in a fashionable grill-room at
Manchester constitutes an auditory experience that could not be
matched outside New York. In the great saloon there is no carpet on
the polished planks of the floor, and the walls consist of highly
resonant tiles, for Manchester would not willingly smother the
slightest murmur of its immense reverberations. The tables are set
close together, so that everybody can hear everybody; the waiters
(exactly the same waiters that one meets at Monte Carlo or in the
Champs Elysées) understand all languages save English, so that the
Britisher must shout at them. Doors are for ever swinging, and
people rush to and fro without surcease. It is Babel. In the
background, a vague somewhere, an orchestra is beating; one
catches the bass notes marking the measure, and occasionally a
high squeak in the upper register. And superimposed on this, the
lusty voice of a man of herculean physique passionately chanting
that “a-hunting we will go.”

One looks through the window and, astonished, observes one of

those electric cars flying hugely past without a sound. The thunder
within has challenged and annihilated the heaviest thunder without.
The experience is unique. One rushes forth in search of silence.
Where can silence dwell in Manchester? The end of every street is a
mystery of white fog, a possible home of silence. But no! Be sure
that if one plucks out the heart of the mystery one will find a lorry
preceded by at least eight iron hoofs. The Art Gallery! One passes in.
Clack! Clack! Clack! It is the turnstile. And all afternoon the advent
of each student of the fine arts, of each cultivated dilettante, is
announced by Clack! Clack! Clack! Two young men come in. Clack!
Clack! Clack! Turner’s “Decline of Carthage” naturally arrests them.
“By Jove!” says one, “that was something to tackle!” Clack! Clack!
Clack! Out again, in search of silence. But over nearly every portal
curves the legend: “Music all day.” And outside the music-halls hired
bawlers are bawling to the people to come in. At last, near the
Infirmary, one sees a stationary cab, and across the window of this
cab is printed, in letters of gold, the extraordinary, the magic, the
wonderful, the amazing word:
“Noiseless.”
Ah! The traditional, sublime humour of cabmen!
 But if my impression has remained, and even waxed, that
Manchester would be an ideal metropolis for a nation of deaf mutes,
my other early impression, of its artistic and intellectual primacy, is
sharply renewed and intensified. Of late, not only by contact with
Manchester men, but by the subtle physiognomy of Manchester
streets and the revealing gestures of the common intelligent person,
I have been more than ever convinced that there is no place which
can match its union of intellectual vigour, artistic perceptiveness, and
political sagacity.

Long and close intercourse with capitals has not in the slightest
degree modified my youthful conception of Manchester, my
admiration for its institutions, and my deep respect for its opinion.
London may patronise Manchester as it chooses, but you can catch
in London’s tone a secret awe, an inward conviction of essential
inferiority. I have noticed this again and again. I know well that my
view is shared by the fine flower of Fleet-street, and no dread of
disagreeable insinuations or accusations shall prevent me from
expressing my sentiments with my customary directness. There is no
department of artistic, intellectual, social, or political activity in which
Manchester has not corporately surpassed London. And there have
been very few occasions on which, when they have differed in
opinion, Manchester has been as wrong as London.
It is, of course, notorious that London is still agitated by more
than one controversy which was definitely settled by Manchester
twenty years ago in the way in which London will settle it twenty
years hence. Manchester is too proud to proclaim its fundamental
supremacy in the island (though unalterably convinced of it), and no
other city would be such a fool as to proclaim it; hence it is not
proclaimed. But it exists, and the general knowledge of it exists.
The explanation of Manchester is twofold. First, its geographical
situation, midway between the corrupting languor of the south and
the too bleak hardness of the north. And, second, that it enjoys the
advantages of a population as vast as that of London, without the
disadvantages of either an exaggerated centralisation or of a capital.
London suffers from elephantiasis, a rush of blue blood to the head,
vertigo, imperfect circulation, and other maladies. Bureaucratic and
caste influences must always vitiate the existence of a capital, and I
do not suppose that any great capital in Europe is the real source of
its country’s life and energy. Not Rome, but Milan! Not Madrid, but
Barcelona! Not St. Petersburg, but Moscow! Not Berlin, but Hamburg
and Munich! Not Paris, but the rest of France! Not London, but the
Manchester area!
 V—LONDON

T
here are probably other streets as ugly, as utterly bereft of the
romantic, as Lots-road, Chelsea, but certainly nothing more
desolating can exist in London. It was ten years since I had
seen it, and now I saw it at its worst moment of the week, about ten
o’clock of a Sunday morning. Some time before I reached it I heard
a humming vibration which grew louder and more impressive as I
approached. I passed (really) sixty-eight seagulls sitting in two
straight rows on the railings of a deserted County Council pier, and
on a rusty lantern at the head of the pier was a sixty-ninth seagull,
no doubt the secretary of their trade union.
A mist lay over the river and over a man reading the “Referee” on
an anchored barge, and nobody at all seemed to be taking any
notice of the growing menace of this humming vibration. Then I
came to a gigantic building, quite new to me—I had not suspected
that such a thing was—a building which must be among the largest
in London, a red brick building with a grandiose architectural effect,
an overpowering affair, one of those affairs that man creates in order
to show how small and puny he himself is. You could pile all the
houses of a dozen neighbouring streets under the colossal roof, of
that erection and leave room for a church or so. Extraordinary that a
returned exile, interested in London, could have walked about
London for days without even getting a glimpse of such hugeness.
It was shut up, closed in, mysterious, inviolable. The gates of its
yards were bolted. It bore no legend of its name and owner; there
was no sign of human life in it. And the humming vibration came out
of it, and was visibly cracking walls and windows in the doll’s-houses
of Lots-road that shook at its feet. Lots-road got up to that thunder,
went to bed to that thunder, ate bacon to it, and generally
transacted its daily life. I gazed baffled at the building. No clue
anywhere to the mystery! Nothing but a proof of the determined
tendency on the part of civilisation to imitate the romances of H. G.
Wells!
A milkman in a striped apron was ringing and ringing angrily at
the grille of a locked public-house. I hate to question people in the
street, but curiosity concerning a marvel is like love, stronger than
hate.
“That?” said the milkman peevishly. “That’s the generating stytion
for the electric rilewys.”
“Which railways?” I asked.
“All of ‘em,” said he. “There’s bin above sixty men killed there
already.”

Who would have supposed, a few years ago, that romance would
visit unromantic Lots-road in this strange and terrible manner,
cracking it, smashing it, deafening it, making the vases rattle on its
mantelpieces, and robbing it of sleep? Lots-road is now the true
romantic centre of London. (It would probably prefer to be
something else, but it is.) It holds the true symbol of the
development of London’s corporate life.
You come to an unusual hole in the street, and enter it, and find
yourself on a large floor surrounded by advertisements of whisky
and art furniture. The whole floor suddenly sinks with you towards
the centre of the earth, far below sewers. You emerge into a system
of tunnels, and, guided by painted white hands, you traverse these
tunnels till you arrive at a precipice. Then a suite of drawing-rooms,
four or six, glides along the front of the precipice. Each saloon is
lighted by scores of electric lamps, and the steel doors of each are
magically thrown wide open. An attendant urges you to come in and
sit down. You do so, and instantly the suite of rooms glides glittering
away with you, curving through an endless subterranean passage,
and stopping now and then for two seconds at a precipice. At last
you get out, and hurry through more tunnels, and another flying
floor wafts you up out of the earth again, and you stagger into
daylight and a strange street, and when your eyes have recovered
themselves you perceive that the strange street is merely Holborn.. .
. And all this because of the roaring necromancers’ castle in Lots-
road! All this impossible without the roaring necromancers’ castle!
People ejaculate, “The new Tubes!” and think they have described
these astounding phenomena. But they have not.

The fact that strikes the traveller beyond all other facts of the new
London is the immensity of the penalty which the Metropolis is now
paying for its size. Tubes, electrified “Districts,” petrol omnibuses,
electric cars and cabs, and automobiles; these are only the more
theatrical aspects of an activity which permeates and exhausts the
life of the community. Locomotion has become an obsession in
London; it has become a perfect nightmare. The city gets larger and
larger, but the centre remains the centre and everybody must get to
it.
See the motor cars speeding over Barnes Common to plunge into
London. One after another, treading on each other’s heels, scurrying,
preoccupied, and malodorous, they fly past in an interminable
procession for hours, to give a melodramatic interest to the streets
of London. See the attack on the omnibuses by a coldly-determined
mob of workers outside Putney Station, and the stream that
ceaselessly descends into Putney Station. Follow the omnibuses as
they rush across the bridge into Fulham-road. See the girls on the
top at 8 a. m. in the frosty fog. They are glad to be anywhere, even
on the top.
See the acrobatic young men who, all along the route, jump on to
the step and drop off disappointed because there are already sixteen
inside and eighteen out. Notice the fight at every stopping-place.
Watch the gradual growth of the traffic, until the driver, from being a
charioteer, is transformed into a solver of Chinese puzzles. And
remember that Fulham-road is one great highway out of fifty. Bend
your head, and gaze through London clay into the tunnels full of
gliding drawing-rooms and the drawing-rooms jammed with people.
Think of the five hundred railway stations of all sorts in London, all
at the same business of transporting people to the centre! Then put
yourself in front of one station, the type-terminus, Liver-pool-street,
and see the incredible thick, surging, bursting torrent that it vomits
(there is no other word) from long before dawn till ten o’clock. And,
finally, see the silent, sanguinary battles on bridges for common
tram-cars and ’buses.
Not clubs, not hotels, not cathedrals, not halls of song, not
emporia, not mansions; but this is London, now; this necessary,
passionate, complex locomotion! All other phenomena are
insignificant beside it.