After a little, the effect of this steadily drifting body of water seemed to soothe his vision. He grew less conscious of mental disturbance and physical disgust alike. Then he stood up, yawned, and glanced at the big clock-tower, where the laggard hands still clung to the unreasonable neighbourhood of seven o’clock. For some reason, he felt much better. The sensation was very welcome. He drew a long breath of satisfaction, and, leaning with his back to the stonework, fell to watching the people go past. By a sudden revulsion of mood, he discovered all at once that the excess of the night was now offering him compensations. His brain was extremely clear, and, now that the lees of drink were gone, served him with an eager and almost fluttering acuteness which it was pleasant to follow. He noted with minute attention the varying types of workmen, shopgirls, clerks, and salesmen as they trooped by in the throng, and found himself devoting to each some appropriate mental comment, some wondering guess into their history, or some flash of speculation as to their future. The instantaneous play of his fancy among these flitting items brought great diversion. He rollicked in it--picking out as they trudged along side by side the book-keeper who was probably short in his accounts, the waiter who had been hacking the wrong horses, the barmaid with the seraph’s face who at luncheon time would be listening unmoved to conversation from City men fit to revolt a dock labourer. It was indeed as good as a play, this marvellous aggregation of human dramatic possibilities surging tirelessly before him. He wondered that he had never thought of seeing it before. From amusing details his mind lifted itself to larger conceptions. He thought of the mystery of London’s vast economy; of all its millions playing dumbly, uninstructedly, almost like automata, their appointed parts in the strange machinery by which so many droves of butchers’ cattle, so many thousands of tons of food and trucks of clothing and coals and oil were brought in daily, and Babylon’s produce was sent out again in balancing repayment. The miracle of these giant scales being always kept even, of London’s ever-craving belly and the country’s never-failing response, loomed upon his imagination. Then, stifling another yawn, it occurred to him that a brain capable of such flights deserved a better fate than to be banged out by a dirty tide against some slime-stained wharf-pile down the river. Yes, and it merited a nobler lot in life, too, than that of being nightly drenched with poisonous drink. Decidedly he would forswear sack, and live cleanly.