WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3886, 4 September 1928, Page 83

WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS.

By

C.G.M.

A city ■ f darkness and slumber wrapped closely in the folds of night as the little ones are gathered under the mothering wing when dusk ha s fallen! Streets empty, deserted and still as the long sea lanes of the pole ! Absent the accustomed sights and sounds of the day ! Peace brooding where activity had reigned duiing the nours of the day ! Silence over all! Silence except for the distant boom of the waves breaking in their endless monotone on the sands of the beach ! These are the conditions with which those who are abroad in the early hours of the morning are familiar. It is a familiarity that breeds no contempt. For just as there is an inexhaustible novelty in the fashionings and designings of Nature, so is there an infinite variety in the night— a fiux and flow of visions and impiessions that are the same and vet never the same, an eternal newness of change. And if some nocturnal wayfarer set out upon our streets on the farther shores of midnight what rare opportunity would he discover for strange imaginings and reflections! No longer would the busy marts and shopping centres of the daylight nours meet the eye. Instead he would find himself in a long and silent corridor tenanted only by a congregation of ghosts flitting in ami out of its dorways, as elusive ideas, evading concrete shape ami expression, lose themselves in the recesses of the mind. Vanished from tiie scene are those who spin the wheels of business—the buyers as well as the sellers; and gone are the scurrying men), hour throngs, borne hastily suburbwards in packed tramcars and brought back again within the one short hour that is allowed for the refuelling of the physical energies. The tearing of fabrics, the packing of parcels, the clicking oi typewriter keys, and the ceaseless hum of conversation all ar e stilled, and their human instruments, scattered to the four corners of the city, have sought the rest and repose that w-ere denied to the tortured brain of Macbeth, the murderer of sleep. A new perspective, too, is created by the absence of light. Earlie; in the evening a long ribbon of illumination produced by the magic of the switch stretches in regular formation as far as the eye can range, but when the streets become, deserted except for the vigilant constable on his beat and the chance I reveller steering his apprehensive and irregular homeward course, a solitary rc-v of lights sharply defines the business section, leaving the rest enshrouded in Nubian blackness. Shop fronts, too, their display goods now undei lock and key, and with blinds drawn down on sightless eyes, add their share to the sombre peace of the hour. And in the stillness of the night the footsteps of the solitary pedestrian make an extraordinary clatter upon the pavements, which throw up the sound to the overhanging verandas, whence it is returned in reverberations that magnify the noise into that of an army of iron-shod spectres upon the march. To one who is unaccustomed to the experience -the effect adds a strange touch of weirdness to his adventure. Passing on towards the outskirts of the city our reflective wanderer has borne in upon him to even greater degree the sense of his own solitude and loneliness. He is now an active unit in a world of sleep. Dimly can the shapes of the houses lie discerned looming through the not quite impenetrable darkness, the sharp outlines of their daylight forms rounded and softened by the gloom. : Here and there, from the hill suburbs a point of light can he picked out. denoting perhaps the sleepless couch of the victim of insomnia or the bed of suffering that prompts reflections on the great mystery of pain. To each, how long must seem the hours of darkness and how weary the waiting for the dawn of a new day! Flash! Suddenly there is a blinding beam of light as a corner is taken, and pensive reflection is dispelled by an immediate alertness of all the faculties. For a moment the nocturnal wayfarer wonders expectantly why no explosion follows the flash. The next, he becomes aware that he is the focus of a powerful electric torch, and that his features are being keenly scanned by the questioning eyes of a policeman standing in furtive retirement in the recess of a dark doorway. Startled out of his introspective reverie his first inclination is to express th annoyance that rises to the surface. But calm yourself, my friend. The constable’s action has been prompted by his sense of humour. His lot is not a happy one, and after all even a policeman is entitled to have his little joke. And so the wanderer passes onwards to the trim suburbs of the south, with their orderly rows of houses in each of which the spell of Morpheus holds sway. Ihe quietness and the stillness are unbroken, and not even the articulate breathing of the sleepers—fruitful subject for the pen of the satirist—emerges ’ from those silent walls. Again there is a flash. But this time it is less direct and more comprehensive and all-envelop-ing. The hour of four O’clock has struck and once again the magic of electricity lias brought into being a myriad of lights which show up brightly' close at hand and can be traced around the contouis of the hills like so many gleamim>strings of pearls. No longer is lie the only animate object in a world of stillness. Hie illusions and impressions of the night are gone, and Dowa the dark and silent street Wlt . h slh ’er-sandalled feet. Crept 'like a frightened girl.

ou *y 13 miles from London, he Kentish village of Keston suffers from an overdose of .foxes, the inhabitants being kept awake at night by the howling of the animats.