Old Londoners
assert that they are not blinded or confused by Pears' Soap in
letters two feet high, scarlet on a gold ground, but can see below
in fine print, and with the naked eye, such legends as Tottenham
Court Road, Westbourne Grove, St. Pancras, Paddington, or Victoria.
It is certainly reasonable that the omnibuses should be decorated to
suit the inhabitants of the place rather than foreigners, and it is
perhaps better to carry a few hundred stupid souls to the wrong
station daily than to allow them to cleanse their hands with the
wrong soap, or quench their thirst with the wrong (which is to say
the unadvertised) beverage.
The conductors do all in their power to mitigate the lot of unhappy
strangers, and it is only now and again that you hear an absent-
minded or logical one call out, 'Castoria! all the w'y for a penny.'
We claim for our method of travelling, not that it is authoritative,
but that it is simple--suitable to persons whose desires are
flexible and whose plans are not fixed. It has its disadvantages,
which may indeed be said of almost anything. For instance, we had
gone for two successive mornings on a Cadbury's Cocoa 'bus to
Francesca's dressmaker in Kensington. On the third morning,
deceived by the ambitious and unscrupulous Cadbury, we mounted it
and journeyed along comfortably three miles to the east of
Kensington before we discovered our mistake.
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