A CITY OF LIGHT.

Evening Star, Issue 14634, 2 August 1911, Page 12

A CITY OF LIGHT.

AMAZING SCENE IN LONDON STREETS [From Otto Special CoRRESPOXDEvr.) LONDON, June 23. Though the police precautions and newspaper cautions scared away hundred* of thousands who migtit ha\e made Lon don tinn objecmr this ( orcnation week. the night scenes witnessed on prote=. sional loutr- would ha\o persuaded the unversed that all the world had tried to crowd itodt into tho nt> and the Wet-t End. night there were, no streets, between the Bank and Hyde Tark; they were hidden and lost under the biatk' throng of humaritv London has not, be fore o.- Mnct Mafekirr; mqht seen such multitudes of people hi every street where there a-e illuminations thev stood packed together pract.cally motionless- It is no exaggeiation to sav that list night it took hours for the pedestrian—all vehicular traffic wa.s stopped about 7 p.m. - to wriggle and weave his way from the Strand to the Bank, a distance you may compass easily afoot in ordinary times in 20 minutes. "And simply to cross many streets meant a tortuous and tedious six-mches-at-a-time quarter of an hour's progress. Thousands of people gave up the attempt to see the illuminations in Pall Mall and Piccadilly and at the Mansion House, and escaped by side streets and alleys, but these defections made no appreciable difference to the density of the masses of humanity. Pall .Mai! was packed from side to side, in St. James street the mass was still more dense, and Piccadillv itself was practically impassable. But —The Climax—to everything and the goal of everybody seemed* to be the spacious area between the Mansion House, the Bank of England, and the Royal Exchange, where these ancient landmark*, ably assisted, by the London and Liverpool and Globe Assurance Company. Smith's Bank, and minor ( corporations made night beautiful. Those j who struggled and crawled at a quarter-of- j a-mile-an-hour pace to this, sightseers : Mecca were well rewarded. Beautiful as ; arc the illuminations in the.West End,; thev cannot compare with those in this j city area. Every building abutting ! thereon is outlined and festooned with j mvriads of colored lights and decked i with hanging? of crimson and blue and ; gold. The Bank of England in itself. is ; a sight worth all one's trouble to get. near'thi*. the very heart of tho city of

Ixmdon. The squab, grey-black building is at night a thing of beauty. Words cannot paint the eflvet of the multitude «>f colored electric bulb.-, set in a setting of silver leaves, which outline its entire face and twine spirally round the classic pillars of its facade, on which great oval "(t.'s" and "M.'s" in scarlet glass shine cut in dazzling radiance. And. standing high above all. are ten great electric torches which take in all the hues of the rainbow as you see them from different angles. People 'murmur with admiration at the rather stereotyped thc»gh beautiful illumination of the Mansion House and. the great buildings adjacent, but they etand gaping at the Bank, dazed with admiration. It is here that the —Densuv of the Crowd—

reaches the limit. The great open space, these last three nights has been packed with humanity thicker even than on Mafeking night. After 9 o'clock it has been a physical impossibility to force one's way from one side to the other. Once you getin to the crowd there you have to stop, and any movement you make has to be in the direction of the How of the human stream. The writer was last night an unwilling prisoner fn the centre of the crowd for fully two hours. In the direction of St. Paul's and along Fleet street mid the Strand the throng of humanity was less dense, but not much. Looking down Ludgate. Hill from the steps of St. Paul's, the sight was truly extraordinary. As far as the eye could reach nothing was to be seen in the road but a closely-packed multitude, their heads and upturned faces forming, under the blaze of a million lights, —A Weird Mosaic The crowd throughout, have been very good-humored, and though thero were exuberant parties who found joy in singing, shouting, and making strange noises upon primitive and barbarous instruments, the crowds hare been for the most part entirely orderly. The crowds -continued large till about 12.30 a.m.. but at this hour it had been decreed by police regulations that all illuminations should bo ex-tingui.-Aed, and then the streets rapidly emptied of people. —Flashing the News.— It Mas but a few seconds after the actual Coronation that word ot it had flashed round the Empire. The crash of the guns in Hyde Park and at the Tower was the firpt intimation to the hundreds of thousands patiently waiting in the it reels of Ixmdon. A special telephone connected the batteries with the Abbey; a telegraph station occupied the ground at the Horse Guards; flag signallers were stationed on Victoria Tower and Westminster Abbey Tower. The arrangements for flashing the news were so complete, indeed, that the ealute boomed out simultaneously all over the Kingdom and the Oversea Dominions. Punctually at 10 i o'clock last night the bonfire* flashed out j their message. London was fringed with flame. From Laud'* End to .lohn o' I Groats, from Lowestoft Xess to the moun- i tains of Wales, on almost every peak in ! Ireland, the tongues of flame leaped among I the pyres, and the sky blazed with the many-colored light of rockets. —M iscellaneous.— The largest London bonfire was in a field to the east of the railway at Grove Park, S-E. It was visible at Harrow-on-the-Hill.

One of the most exciting incidents of j the day luckily had no disastrous results, j While the troops and crowds lined Pall j Mall awaiting the return of the Royal [ procession from the Abbey, an outbreak ! of fire occurred on a crowded first-floor ! stand opposite Marlborough House. j Lord Churchill was. unable to unfasten ' Ihe shoulder knots of the Kings robe, but | he fortunately had a pair of-scissors, in' lis pocket, and the difficulty was promptly got over. Some of the women in the Abbey could not refrain from an exclamation almost j of rapture when t hey saw the Queen's drefs ; of ivory satin embroidered in an exquisitedesign which introduced the English rose, i the Scottish thistle, the Irieh ehamrock, ■ and the lotus lily of India.. . ~\ At least 5.000 people who had taken j up places at 4 a.m., and before, the road- j way at the top of Northumberland avenue. • were displaced by troops at. 7 a.m.. when I rt was too late to find other positions. - t Several street venders in the Mall sold j a number of miniature " grand stands."' in the shape of roughly-constructed stools, wh:H« one man tried to sell small mirrors fured on shafts of wood. To demonstrate their utility he stood with-his..hack to the route, held the mirror aloft,, and-saw the; reflection of all that passed. -•* The police were tired put by their long j ■pell of duty, and after the masses'of [■ people had dispersed in the afternoon | and released the greater -part ©£ .the,-'force. !• for a few hours, constables were lo he | eeen snatching a few minutes' repose in ] every possible corner. _ ~' -] An ingenious spectator in. the stail, i anxious to gain an elevated jwsition,"dug ; the earth up. into a mound. Immediately everyone in the vicinity began similar ex-- ■ cavations, with the result that cacti' one ha<i a miniature hill all to himself.

Over 1,000 people ulept in St. James's PaTk to secure good positions from w:hich to view th« procession from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey, and thousands slept in the streeb along the line of route of to-day's pageant. lit Fleet street early, this morning a youth sitting on the curb fell asleep; and. » stray dog—the only one to be seen in ilie thoroughfare—amused; himself and the bystanders- by washing the lad's somewhat grubby face. The boy remained quite unconscious of the dog's ministrations for quite a minute. Th/e passage, of various detachments, of troops through the to their appointed place- was a iesaoti" in.lmperial his-. tar? stretcfaingfrom Bleahjaiirkto_Waterloo, eminence to the slopes of Alma, to Luck-

now -and Delhi, RorfceVs Drift, Ulundi, Cotenao, and Pswurdebexg. _ Detectives in Court uniform and in the uniforms of distinguished officers mingled with the guests in Westminster Abbey, and one was. dressed as a " beef eaters" The .'crowds in Whitehall and Parliament etreef ~dtmng" tb,e ceremony in the Abbey sang 'God Rare, the King," snatches of 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow,' ard other songs, with a certain amount of m-alry and a most uncertain amount of harmony. The Chines? representatives took thai procession and the plaudits of the crowr! with an Oriental calm. They looked, fir«t to one Mdr of the street, then toj another, taking everything tn. saying nothing One of them on the Teturn journey was in a late carriage, which was Being thus out of tho procession, he lit) a cigarette—a touch of relief from cere, momat strain -which the* onlookers quitot enjoyed. S An amuMng. but to manv people no *& o\er-p]ea=ant incident, was the going on tire of a chimney at. the Paymaster'-* beside the Admiralty grand stand. This: chimney sent forth a fine crop of " blacks,"! which" fell like a shower on the folks in; tbe grand stand. The ladies, to keep their hats and frocks from neing spoiled, put* up their umbrellas and parasols, and some of them even left their seats until the •• blacks " had stopped falling.