I think it was Mr. Mark Sheridan who was singing, some few years back,
that "All the girls are lover-ly by the seaside!" I do not know the poet
responsible for this sentiment, but I should like to take him to any of
the London bridges and let him watch the crowd coming home at six
o'clock. He was all wrong, anyway. The girls are not lovely by the
seaside. If there is one place where the sweetest girl is decidedly
plain and ill-kempt it is at the seaside. His song should read, "All the
girls are lover-ly up in London!" And they are, whether they be
chorus-girls, typists, shop-girls, Reuter's messenger-girls, modistes,
or factory girls. Do you know those delightful London children, the
tailors' collectors, who "fetch it and bring it home"? Their job is to
take out the work from the big tailoring establishments to the dozens
and dozens of home workers, and to collect it from them at the appointed
time. You may easily recognize them by the large black-lining bundles
which they carry so deftly under either arm. Mostly they are dear little
girls of about fourteen, in short frocks, and mostly they are pretty.
They have a casual manner, and they smile very winningly. Often their
little feet tramp twelve and fourteen miles a day delivering and
collecting; often they are sworn at by the foreman for being late; often
they are very unhappy, and hardly ever do they get more than
seven-and-sixpence a week. But they always smile: a little timidly, you
know, because they are so young and London is so full of perils; yea,
though they work harder than any other sweated labourer--they smile.
And over the bridges they come at nightfall, if they are not doing
overtime, chattering and smiling, each with a Dorothy-bag, or imitation
leather dispatch-case, each with a paper novelette, and so to the clear
spaces of Clapham Common, now glittering with the lights of home, and
holding in its midst a precious jewel--the sparkled windows of the
Windmill Inn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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