Almost every house in this street was in ruins; sometimes the ruins were complete--only an isolated chimney of broken stone wall remaining, sometimes the shell was standing, the windows boarded up with wood, sometimes almost the whole building was there, a gaping space in the roof the only sign of desolation.

And there remained the ironical signs of its earlier life.

Many of the buildings had their titles still upon them.

In one place I saw the blackened and almost illegible plate of a lawyer, in another a large still fresh-looking advertisement of a dentist, here there was the large lettering "Tobacconist," there upon a trembling wall the tattered remains of an announcement of a sale of furniture.
Once, most ironical of all, a gaping and smoke-stained building showed the half-torn remnant of a cinematograph picture, a fat gentleman in a bowler hat entering with a lady on either arm a gaily painted restaurant.

Over this, in big letters, the word "FARCE." Although we saw no soldiers we were not entirely alone.