about
ten o'clock
I got out into Farringdon Street , and at the near Circus , where four streets meet , had under my furthest range of vision nothing but four fields of bodies , bodies , clad in a rag-shop of every faded colour , or half-clad , or not clad at all , actually , in many cases , over-lying one another , as I had seen at Reading , but here with a markedly more skeleton appearance : for I saw the swollen-looking shoulders , sharp hips , hollow abdomens , and stiff bony limbs of people dead from famine , the whole having the grotesque air of some _ macabre _ battle-field of fallen marionettes . Mixed with these was an extraordinary number of vehicles of all sorts , so that I saw that driving among them would be impracticable , whereas the street which I had taken during the night was fairly clear . I thought a minute what I should do : then went by a parallel back-street , and came out to a shop in the Strand , where I hoped to find all the information which I needed about the excavations of the country . The shutters were up , and I did not wish to make any noise among these people , though the morning was bright , it being about ten o'clock , and it was easy to effect entrance , for I saw a crow-bar in a big covered furniture-van near . I , therefore , went northward , till I came to the British Museum , the cataloguing-system of which I knew well , and passed in . There was no one at the library-door to bid me stop , and in the great round reading-room not a soul , except one old man with a bag of goître hung at his neck , and spectacles , he lying up a book-ladder near the shelves , a ` reader ' to the last . I got to the printed catalogues , and for an hour was upstairs among the dim sacred galleries of this still place , and at the sight of certain Greek and Coptic papyri , charters , seals , had such a dream of this ancient earth , my good God , as even an angel 's pen could not half express on paper .