As night drew on, the city became a blaze of light.Splashes of color, green, amber, and ruby, caught the eye at every point, and 'E.R.,' in great cut-crystal letters and backed by flaming gas, was everywhere.The crowds in the streets increased by hundreds of thousands, and though the police sternly put down mafficking, drunkenness and rough play abounded.The tired workers seemed to have gone mad with the relaxation and excitement, and they surged and danced down the streets, men and women, old and young, with linked arms and in long rows, singing, 'I may be crazy, but I love you,'
'Dolly Gray,' and 'The Honeysuckle and the Bee,'- the last rendered something like this:
Yew aw the enny, ennyseckle, Oi em ther bee, Oi'd like ter sip ther enny from those red lips, yew see.
I sat on a bench on the Thames Embankment, looking across the illuminated water.It was approaching midnight, and before me poured the better class of merrymakers, shunning the more riotous streets and returning home.On the bench beside me sat two ragged creatures, a man and a woman, nodding and dozing.The woman sat with her arms clasped across the breast, holding tightly, her body in constant play,- now dropping forward till it seemed its balance would be overcome and she would fall to the pavement; now inclining to the left, sideways, till her head rested on the man's shoulder; and now to the right, stretched and strained, till the pain of it awoke her and she sat bolt upright.Whereupon the dropping forward would begin again and go through its cycle till she was aroused by the strain and stretch.