What’s a man to do at night out here?  Let’s have a look at all these posters displayed in front of the Free Library, where a few poor creatures are still reading last night’s news for the warmth.  Next week there’s a concert of chamber-music in the Town Hall I suppose I might go to that, just to “kill time” as they say.  Think of a journalist wanting to kill time!  Or to kill anything but another fellow’s “stuff,” and sometimes an editor!  Then there’s a boxing competition at the St. John’s Arms, and a subscription dance in the Nelson Rooms, and a lecture on Dante, with illustrations from contemporary art, for working men and women, at the Institute.  Also there’s something called the Why-Be-Lonesome Club for promoting friendly social intercourse among the young and old of all classes.  I suppose I might go to that too.  It sounds comprehensive.

There seems no need to be dull in the suburbs.  A man in a cart is still crying coke down the street.  Another desires to sell clothes-props.  A brace of lovers come stealing out of the Common through the mist, careless of mud and soaking grass.  I suppose people would say I’m too old to make love on a County Council bench.  In love’s cash-books the balance-sheet of years is kept with remorseless accuracy.

The foreign editors are waiting now in their silent room, and the telegrams come to them from the ends of the world.  They fold them in packets together by countries or continents—­the Indian stuff, the Russian stuff, the Egyptian, Balkan, Austrian, South African, Persian, Japanese, American, Spanish, and all the rest.  They’ll have pretty nearly seven columns by this time, and the order will come “Two-and-a-half foreign,” Then the piecing and cutting will begin.  One of them sits in a telephone box with bands across his head, and repeats a message from our Paris correspondent.  Through our Paris man we can talk with Berlin and Rome.

From this rising ground I can see the light of the city reflected on the misty air, and somewhere mingled in that light are the big lamps down in Fleet Street.  The City’s voice comes to me like a confused murmur through a telephone when the words are unintelligible.  The only distinct sounds are the dripping of the moisture from the trees in suburban gardens, and the voice of an old lady imploring her pet dog to return from his evening walk.

The voice of all the world is now heard in that silent room.  From moment to moment news is coming of treaties and revolutions, of sultans deposed and kings enthroned, of commerce and failures, of shipwrecks, earthquakes, and explorations, of wars and flooded camps and sieges, of intrigue, diplomacy, and assassination, of love, murder, revenge, and all the public joy and sorrow and business of mankind.  All the voices of fear, hope, and lamentation echo in that silent little room; and maps hang on the walls, and guide-books are always ready, for who knows where the next event may come to pass upon this energetic little earth, already twisting for a hundred million years around the sun?