etching all the same. You look up a frowsy little courtyard, the walls
of which are more graceful than plumb, and you see a horse's head
sticking out into the etching. Also, across the way the "k" has
dropped out of steak on the window of a chop-house. The public-houses
down this way, many of them, are very low places. The thing to do in
this world is to get as much innocent pleasure out of the spectacle as
possible.

Well, the streets here twist about beneath the Bridge, so that you do
not know what's beyond the turning. People going and coming through
the arches are silhouettes. Overhead it is like the grumbling of a
thunder storm. Wagons going over the stones rattle tremendously, and
they carry lanterns swung beneath to be lighted at night. The streets
have fine names: there is Gold Street, and then Jacob Street.
Frankfort Street widens out and becomes a generous thoroughfare, all in
sunlight. There is a huge, gay hoarding to the right as you go down.
On your left you see one of the towers of the Bridge rising high in the
air. Directly ahead the "JL" crosses the way!

Now comes the point which I have been getting at. You dip and turn
into Vandewater Street. Under the Bridge at once you go, where all
sounds are weird, hollow sounds, and then out again. The atmosphere
has been becoming more and more charged with the character of the
printing business. Now may be felt the tremour and heard the sound of
moving presses. Printing houses, dealers in "litho inks," linotype
companies, paper makers, "publishers and jobbers of books," "photo
engraving" establishments are all about. Here is a far-famed
publishing house the sight of which takes you back with a jump to your
boyhood, your youthful, arrant, adventurous reading. Those were the
happy days when the flavour of Crime was like ginger i' the mouth.