procession in his office coat.

So I say it is my custom to go gaily, and withal stately, to meet my
twelve-pound-ten in a hansom. For many reasons the occasion always seems
something of an adventure, and I confess I always feel a little excited
about it--indeed, to tell the truth, a little nervous. As I glide along
in my state barge (which seems a much more proper and impressive image
for a hansom than 'gondola,' with its reminiscences of Earl's Court) I
feel like some fragile country flower torn from its roots, and
bewilderingly hurried along upon the turbid, swollen stream of London
life.

The stream glides sweetly with a pleasant trotting tinkle of bells by
the green parkside of Piccadilly, and sweet is it to hear the sirens
singing, and to see them combing their gilded locks, on the yellow sands
of Piccadilly Circus--so called, no doubt, from the number of horses and
the skill of their drivers. Here are the whirling pools of pleasure,
merry wheels of laughing waters, where your hansom glides along with a
golden ease--it is only when you enter the First Cataract of the Strand
that you become aware of the far-distant terrible roar of the Falls!
They are yet nearly two miles away, but already, like Niagara, thou
hearest the sound thereof--the fateful sound of that human Niagara,
where all the great rivers of London converge: the dark, strong floods
surging out from the gloomy fastnesses of the East End, the
quick-running streams from the palaces of the West, the East with its
wagons, the West with its hansoms, the four winds with their omnibuses,
the horses and carriages under the earth jetting up their companies of
grimy passengers, the very air busy with a million errands.

You are in the rapids--metaphorically speaking--as you crawl down