Yet the
number of visitors has fallen off. In the first year of its existence
nearly a million entered the gates; four years later an equal number
was registered; for the last three years the number has fallen to less
than half a million. Its popularity, therefore, is on the decline.
It is, again, a great place for children. They are sent here just as
they are sent to the British Museum and the South Kensington Museum,
in order to be out of the way. You will always see children in these
places, strolling listlessly among the rooms and corridors. Once, for
instance, on a certain Easter Monday, I encountered, in the South
Kensington Museum, a miserable little pair, who were crying in a
corner by themselves. Beside the cases full of splendid embroideries
and golden lace, among which they had strayed, they looked curiously
incongruous, and somewhat like the unfortunate pair led to their
destruction by the wicked uncle. They had, in fact, been sent to the
museum by their mother, with a piece of bread-and-butter for their
dinner, and told to stay there all day long. By this time the
bread-and-butter had long since been eaten up, and they were hungry
again, and there was a long afternoon before them. What to these
hungry children would have been a whole Field of the Cloth of Gold? We
must, therefore, make very large deductions indeed when we consider
the popularity of Bethnal Green.
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