In the main arteries, it is true, there is always a little
life; the tramp of feet never ceases day or night in Fleet Street or
Cheapside. But in all the narrow streets branching north and south,
east and west, of the great thoroughfares there is silence--there is
sleep. This Sabbath of forty hours' duration is absolutely
unparalleled in any other City of the world. There is no other place,
there never has been any other place, in which not only work ceases,
but where the workers also disappear. In that far-off City of the
Rabbis called Sambatyon, where live the descendants of the Ten Tribes,
the river which surrounds and protects the City with its broad and
mighty flood, too strong for boats to cross, ceases to flow on the
Sabbath; but it is not pretended that the people cease to live there.
Of no other City can it be said that it sleeps from Saturday night
till Monday morning.
An attempt is made to awaken the City every Sunday morning when the
bells begin to ring, and there is as great and joyful a ringing from
every church tower or steeple as if the bells were calling the
faithful, as of old, by the hundred thousand; they go on ringing
because it is their duty; they were hung up there for no other
purpose; hidden away in the towers, they do not know that the people
have all gone away, and that they ring to empty houses and deserted
streets.
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