Excerpt from London Etchings Whether he drinks it from earthen vessels of winter or from golden stoups of summer, it is never anything but water now; yet he can still remember some times how, long ago, one dazzling mom ing when the spirit of spring breathed a new soul into the world, there came on him also a sudden change, and the water of his life blushed to wine. The miracle happened in this wise bending that morning, as usual, over his writing, he was suddenly thrilled by an ethereal singing, every note of which wavered, a wonderful bubble of sound, down into the dead stillness of the square and burst, filling it with thin echoes. He caught his breath and, glancing in bewilderment at the houses Opposite, saw the singer, a fair young girl, reaching from an attic casement to hang a bird cage on a nail. The sun was flashing in the upper windows on the other side of the square. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.