TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston

The aforementioned assignation was fixed for five
o'clock in the lounge of the Caledonian Hotel; but I
came down from Slateford by an early afternoon
tramcar and spent a couple of hours strolling con-
tentedly about the city, which happened to be looking
its best in the hazy sunshine of one of those mild
October days which induce mellow meditations. After
my monastical existence at the hospital I found
Princes Street a very pleasant promenading place.
The War did not seem to have deprived Edinburgh
of any of its delightful dignity; and when I thought
of Liverpool, where I wandered about with my wor-
ries in July, my preference for Edinburgh was beyond
question. The town-dweller goes out into the country
to be refreshed by the stillness, and whatever else he
may find there in the way of wild flowers, woods,
fields, far-off hills, and the nobly-clouded skies which
had somehow escaped his notice while he walked to
and fro with his eyes on the ground. Those who live
on the land come into the city and—if they are sen-
sible people with an aptitude for experiencing—see
it as it really is. It always pleases me to watch simple
country people loitering about the London pave-
ments, staring at everything around them and being
bumped into by persons pressed for time \vho are
part of that incessant procession which is loosely re-
ferred to as "the hive of human activity". All this
merely indicates that although I arrived in Edin-
burgh with a couple of hours to spare and had nothing
definite to do except to have a hair-cut, nevertheless
I found no difficulty in filling up the time by gazing
at shop-windows, faces, and architectural vistas, while
feeling that I was very lucky to be alive on that
serenely sunlit afternoon.

Waiting for Doctor Macamble in the lounge of the
647