Читать книгу Knots Untied; Or, Ways and By-ways in the Hidden Life of American Detectives - George S. McWatters - Страница 10

Table of Contents

London is a world-school in itself. What a man cannot learn there of arts, sciences, and literature and of all the various phases of humanity, from the worse or lower than the barbarian, up to the highest type which "Natural Selection," according to the Darwinian theory, has developed, he would be unable to learn in any other spot of Earth. Though young yet mature, and with an active, inquiring brain it cannot be supposed that Mr. McWatters allowed the grand opportunity for observation which life in London gave him, to pass profitlessly. Going from among the stiff Presbyterian forms of life in the north of Ireland, which must have been galling to a spirit like his, directly to London with all its social freedoms, the change was a great one for him, and must have piqued his intelligence to the keenest examination and scrutiny of his new surroundings.

In London dwell the best as well as the worst people to be found in the world. The advanced spirits, philosophers and reformers, whom the civilization of other European countries is not sufficiently developed to tolerate, seek the asylum of England and make London their home; so, too, of the criminal classes. The most murderous thieves and burglars find in London a hiding place and theatre of operations. London, which was too large even fifty years ago, and was then emphatically one of those accursed "vampires upon the public weal," as Jefferson declared all cities to be, has grown marvelously since, and continues to grow to the wonder of all political economists, who are at a loss to determine wherefore. But such is the fact, and into this great seething sea of human life was it that Mr. McWatters plunged in his first essay at "studying human nature" away from the narrow field of his boyhood's observations. Whoever resides in London, and acquaints himself with what is about him, and mingles in the city's strifes, and comes out unscathed need not fear to trust himself anywhere in the world.