WOOD AND WOULD NOT.
WHEN wood-pavements were introduced, everybody was charmed. Your carriage glided like a Thames wherry ; your house seemed transported to the quiet of the country ; at church you could hear the clergyman. Then it was so clean ! Fault-finders, in- deed, said that wood was expensive, and not durable ; but they were not listened to. Yet one defect was undeniable— it was slippery. Sit' Peter Laurie was very irate, and was, not for "putting down" the wood, but, like a proper Magistrate, for taking it up : he had clean "gone wood" about it and the da- mage to his horses. And, sure enough, in times of greasy mud or icy vergks, you might see valuable horses down by twos and threes at a time. Mr. Leitch Ritchie suggested a remedy—the practice in St. Petersburg, where they put over the wood a thin coating of pitch and then a sprinkling of grit, which gives the safe bite of a macadamized road. Is it done? No: the idea has net penetrated the public mind. The season of mud and ice has come again—again panting horses strew the ground—people talk of giving up the wood-pavement in despair; and really it will go, all because we do net try a little pitch and grit.
Previous page
