DOI article:
Le Gallienne, Richard: A seventh-story heaven
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27806#0015
A Seventh-story Heaven
By Richard Le Gallienne
“ Dans un grenter qu'on est bien a nj'ingt ans ! ”
■ one end of the city that I love there is a tall dingy pile of offices
f\ that has evidently seen more prosperous fortunes. It is
not the aristocratic end. It is remote from the lordly street of the
fine shops of the fair women, where in the summer afternoons
the gay bank clerks parade arm-in-arm in the wake of the tempes-
tuous petticoat. It lies aside from the great exchange which looks
like a scene from Romeo and Juliet in the moonlight, from the
town-hall from whose clocked and gilded cupola ring sweet chimes
at midnight, and whence, throned above the city, a golden
Britannia, in the sight of all men, is seen visibly ruling the waves ;
while in the square below the death of Nelson is played all day in
stone, with a frieze of his noble words about the pedestal—
England expects ! What an influence that stirring challenge has
yet upon the hearts of men may be seen by any one who will
study the faces of the busy, imaginative cotton-brokers, who, in
the thronged and humming mornings, sell what they have never
seen to a customer they will never see.
In fact, the end I mean is just the very opposite end to that.
It is the end where the cotton that everybody sells and nobody
buys is seen, piled in great white stacks, or swinging in the air
from the necks of mighty cranes, that could nip up an elephant
with
By Richard Le Gallienne
“ Dans un grenter qu'on est bien a nj'ingt ans ! ”
■ one end of the city that I love there is a tall dingy pile of offices
f\ that has evidently seen more prosperous fortunes. It is
not the aristocratic end. It is remote from the lordly street of the
fine shops of the fair women, where in the summer afternoons
the gay bank clerks parade arm-in-arm in the wake of the tempes-
tuous petticoat. It lies aside from the great exchange which looks
like a scene from Romeo and Juliet in the moonlight, from the
town-hall from whose clocked and gilded cupola ring sweet chimes
at midnight, and whence, throned above the city, a golden
Britannia, in the sight of all men, is seen visibly ruling the waves ;
while in the square below the death of Nelson is played all day in
stone, with a frieze of his noble words about the pedestal—
England expects ! What an influence that stirring challenge has
yet upon the hearts of men may be seen by any one who will
study the faces of the busy, imaginative cotton-brokers, who, in
the thronged and humming mornings, sell what they have never
seen to a customer they will never see.
In fact, the end I mean is just the very opposite end to that.
It is the end where the cotton that everybody sells and nobody
buys is seen, piled in great white stacks, or swinging in the air
from the necks of mighty cranes, that could nip up an elephant
with