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The night was a little older than when he had entered, otherwise it was unchanged. The rain was still falling; the wind still buffeted the creaking shutters and the swinging sign-boards. But the man? He had entered, thinking nothing of rain or wind, thinking little even of the horse and furniture, and the good clothes made under his mother's eye, which he had sacrificed to refill his purse.
You observe on the sign-boards, "Established ninety years in Threadneedle Street," "Established in 1109," denoting long pedigrees of silk-mercers and hosiers, De Foe's contemporaries still represented by their posterity, who handle the hereditary yardstick on the same spot. I must not forget to say that I crossed the Thames over a bridge which, I think, is near Charing Cross.
And all the other cities, big and little, said a boom-boom of their own. A mighty nation had gone to war. A time of singing. Songs on the lips of crowds. Lights in their eyes. You tell 'em, kid! Store fronts, cabarets, hotel lobbies, sign-boards, office buildings all become shining citadels of righteousness beleaguered by the powers of darkness.
When human thought comes, if I may so say, full butt against a stark, staring contradiction like that, it is no proof that either of the propositions is false. It is only like the sign-boards that the iceman puts upon the thin ice, 'dangerous! a warning that that is not a place for us to tread.
Children and promenaders had sat only yesterday on those benches and, the night before that, oil lamps or gas flames had burned on those lamp-posts. The sign-boards on top had invited customers into shop or inn, and the roll of carpet beneath was perhaps to have covered some floor to-morrow.
These houses, as in all business streets in the American cities, are disfigured, up to the third story, by large glaring sign-boards containing the names and occupations of their residents. The side walks are of wood, and, wherever they are made of this unsubstantial material, one frequently finds oneself stepping into a hole, or upon the end of a board which tilts up under one's feet.
Majorca lay below, glistening amidst its hillocks of pipeclay. The atmosphere was clear, and the sky blue and cloudless. Though the town was two miles distant, I could read some of the names on the large canvas sign-boards over the hotel doors; and with the help of an opera-glass, I easily distinguished the windows of a house six miles off.
If you move the pontoons, be sure to make a good road out to Garden's Corners, and mark it with sign-boards obstructing the old road, so that, should I send back any detachments, they would not be misled. I prefer that Hatch's force should not be materially weakened until I am near Columbia, when you may be governed by the situation of affairs about Charleston.
The butchers' shops are equally prolific in external adornments. On the sign-boards you see every animal fit to be eaten, and many of questionable aspect, denuded of their skins and reduced to every conceivable degree of butchery; so that if you want a veal cutlet of any particular pattern, all you have to do is to select your pattern, and the cutlet will be chopped accordingly.
Luckily he was beginning to sell a little; disposing of tiny canvases, at the rate of ten and twelve francs a-piece, to Papa Malgras, a wary picture dealer. After all, he preferred starvation to turning his art into mere commerce by manufacturing portraits of tradesmen and their wives; concocting conventional religious pictures or daubing blinds for restaurants or sign-boards for accoucheuses.
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