OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES On the dreary suburban edge of a very old, very ignorant, very sooty, hardhearted, stony-streeted, meanly grim, little provincial town there stands a gasometer.

On one side of this gasometer begins a region of disappointed fields, which, however, has hardly begun before a railway embankment cuts across, at an angle convenient for its entirely obscuring the few meadows and trees that in this desolate land do duty for a countryside.

The dull workmen's streets that here abruptly present unfinished ends to the universe must console themselves with the gasometer.

And indeed they seem more than content.

For a street boasting the best view, as it runs out its sordid line longer than the rest, is proudly called Gasometer Street.