SMALL, GENERIC STREETS

And speaking of streets, in a generic sort of way, here is a wonderful/terrible poem by one Hamish Beamish, titled “Streets”

‘Streets!


Grim, relentless, sordid streets!


Miles of poignant streets,


East, West, North,


And stretching starkly South;


Sad, hopeless, dismal, cheerless, chilling


Streets!‘

The poem and Hamish Beamish are the creations of PG. Wodehouse in the novel 1927 The Small Bachelor, a novelization of a 1917 musical, “Oh, Lady, Lady!” although a quick look at the cast list of that musical reveals no such character as Hamish Beamish.

Elsewhere in the novel Molly Sigsbee tells her father about a wedding proposal she’s received.

        "Well, anyway, we walked around for a while, looking at the animals, and suddenly he asked me to marry him outside the cage of the Siberian yak."

          Hilarity, of course, ensues.