Words&Dirt

“Daniel glanced curiously down the segment of Mint Street that had just come into view.  He was strangely let down to see that it was quiet and almost peaceful.  He’d been hoping that the Mint would only become more Hellish the deeper he went into it, like the Inferno according to Dante, and that in its deepest penetralia would be a forge of surpassing hotness where Isaac turned lead into gold.  But from this corner ’twas plain that the climax had come already––that all the big, hot, and loud bits were close to the entrance (which made sense logistically, he had to admit) and that this northern limb was what passed for a sedate residential neighborhood.  It was about as hellish as Bloomsbury Square.  Which only went to show that Englishmen could live anywhere.  Condemn an Englishman to hell, and he’d plant a bed of petunias and roll out a nice bowling-green on the brimstone.”

––The System of the World, by Neal Stephenson, pg. 200