City Apparitions
The Gaslamp District Has Begun To Keep Its Own Counsel
A correspondent walks the fog-bound courts after midnight and finds that every new machine brings an older terror into sharper relief.
I set out from Wren Court at eleven, when the lamps had only just ceased hissing and the omnibus wheels were still wet from the river mist. By the third alley a boy in a brass-button coat was selling sketches of the same doorway I had come to inspect, each one showing a different face at the fanlight.
The street has learned to print back
The new telegraph office promised order: hours marked, messages numbered, clerks fenced behind polished oak. Yet its wires cross the roofs like black veins.