The City of Beautiful Nonsense

Book excerpt: " Of course, the eighteenth of March--but it is out of the question to say upon which day of the week it fell. It was half-past seven in the evening. At half-past seven it is dark, the lamps are lighted, the houses huddle together in groups. They have secrets to tell as soon as it is dark. Ah! If you knew the secrets that houses are telling when the shadows draw them so close together! But you never will know. They close their eyes and they whisper. Around the fields of Lincoln's Inn it was as still as the grave. The footsteps of a lawyer's clerk hurrying late away from chambers vibrated through the intense quiet. You heard each step to the very last. So long as you could see him, you heard them plainly; then he vanished behind the curtain of shadows, the sounds became muffled, and at last the silence crept back into the Fields crept all round you, half eager, half reluctant, like sleepy children drawn from their beds to hear the end of a fairy story. There was a fairy story to be told, too. It began that night of the eighteenth of March the Eve of St. Joseph's day.