Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 105, September 9, 1893

A BROWN STUDY IN AUTUMN TINTS.

(Being a Fragment from a Matter-of-fact Romance.)

And he walked along the deserted streets and could see no one. Here and there would be a pile of stones and wooden blocks, telling of an impeded thoroughfare, but the place itself was empty. There were seemingly no inhabitants in this deserted city. They had vanished into thin, or, rather, murky air.

Then he looked at what appeared to be a playhouse. The doors were closed, and the bill-boards were pasted over with blue paper. Evidently the portals of the theatre had not been open for weeks, perchance for months.

And it was the same in the parks. Only the leaves moved, and then only when the wind agitated them. There were a few sparrows in the trees, but they seemed to be ashamed of themselves, and chirruped (so to speak) with bated breath. Oh it was indeed a scene of desolation.

And the shops, too! Many of them were closed, and those which were open seemed to be tenantless. There were no customers; no counter attendants. Trade seemed to be as dead as the proverbial door-nail.

And the hoardings too! Even they had suffered. Old posters, manifestly out of date, fluttered in tatters; it had been no one's business to restore the rotting paper, and it had gone the way of other grass. The placards were worse than useless; they could not be deciphered.

And yet again he marched on. There were exhibitions, and no one to see them; museums, and no visitors to inspect them; and churches, and no one to fill them. At length he came upon a guardian of the public peace who was lazily gazing into the sluggish river over the parapet of an embankment.

"Good sir," said he, "can you tell me if this dreadful, lonely, deserted place is the City of the Dead?"

"Go along with you!" cried the policeman, good-humouredly; "it's only London in September!"

And then he felt that he had been deceived by appearances!