A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.
There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the air, and presently the bleared white visage of a sunless winter day emerged like a dead-born child.
The sky was dark and gloomy, the air was damp and raw, the streets were wet and sloppy. The smoke hung sluggishly above the chimney-tops as if it lacked the courage to rise, and the rain came slowly and doggedly down, as if it had not even the spirit to pour.
Yokohama does not improve on further acquaintance. It has a dead-alive look. It has irregularity without picturesqueness, and the grey sky, grey sea, grey houses, and grey roofs, look harmoniously dull.
The Bronx always seemed very dreary to me.
What's nice about the rain is you don't feel you have to live up to anything. Everything around you is so grey and wet and damp and dreary that you don't feel you have to smile and percolate as you do on a sunny spring day.
The netherworld is timeless and unchanging, and boring -- much like a doctor's waiting room.
This because it is never really very cold in England. It is drizzly, and the wind will blow; hail happens, and there is a breed of Tuesday in January in which time creeps and no light comes and the air is full of water and nobody really loves anybody, but still a decent jumper and a waxen jacket lined with wool is sufficient for every weather England's got to give.
The day was gray, the color of Europe.
