Excerpt: “London in September. A dull, close, airless day. The streets would have been dusty enough too, no doubt, had there been a breath to stir the dust, which one felt instinctively, was lying there in masses, ready on the slightest provocation to rise in choking clouds. A day when one longed for the sea, or failing that, for a breeze of fresh air. A day when one could hardly believe in the reality of cool green fields, or babbling, trickling brooks. Not that it was so much hot, for there was little sun, as dry, and heavy, and intensely dull. Dull everywhere, but especially so in one of the somewhat old-fashioned, but unmistakably respectable squares of which there are not a few in London, so much resembling each other as to require no special description. The square at this season looked its very dullest and ugliest; under these circumstances, I should suppose, the more nearly fulfilling the aim, as regards outward appearance, of the melancholy architects who planned it. Half the houses were shut-up, and of the remainder, several were evidently shortly about to be so, for in some, hot and dusty housemaids were to be seen pulling down window curtains, and in one or two more an acute observer, by dint of a little peeping, might have discovered business-like trunks and carpet-bags ready packed and strapped for starting, or else gaping open while undergoing the mysterious process called “airing,” in some of the lower regions where such domestic rites are usually performed."
