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Title: Nights in London

Author: Thomas Burke

Release Date: November 24, 2007 [eBook #23605]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NIGHTS IN LONDON***

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NIGHTS IN LONDON

by

THOMAS BURKE

Author of "Limehouse Nights."

[Illustration]

New York
Henry Holt and Company
1918

First published in 1915
Popular Edition . 1918

[Illustration: ROUND THE HALLS]

_CITY DUSK_

_The day dies in a wrath of cloud,
Flecking her roofs with pallid rain,
And dies its music, harsh and loud,
Struck from the tiresome strings of pain._

_Her highways leap to festal bloom,
And swallow-swift the traffic skims
O'er sudden shoals of light and gloom,
Made lovelier where the distance dims._

_Robed by her tiring-maid, the dusk,
The town lies in a silvered bower,
As, from a miserable husk,
The lily robes herself with flower._

_And all her tangled streets are gay,
And all her rudenesses are gone;
For, howso pitiless the day,
The evening brings delight alone._

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

LIMEHOUSE NIGHTS: TALES OF CHINATOWN
TWINKLETOES.

TO

MY MOTHER

WHO STILL ENJOYS A NIGHT IN TOWN

_NOTE_

_These chapters on London life deal almost exclusively with the
period before war, when the citizen was permitted to live in
freedom, to develop himself to his finest possibilities, and to
pursue happiness as he was meant to do. Since the delights of these
happy times have been taken from us, perhaps never to be restored,
it is well that they should be recorded before they are forgotten._
_T. B._

CONTENTS

PAGE
NOCTURNAL 11

AN ENTER