icerone led me
into the strange arcade, which I certainly could not have entered
without his protection. Hundreds of men, women, and boys were gathered
in groups round coke fires, some partaking of coffee, others singing,
the majority sleeping. After satisfying himself that the fires were
legitimate ones, and not composed of broken fences, my guide left this
teeming hive unmolested. We then steered for the course, not by the high
road, but skirting it along the fields. The policeman, like myself,
carried a stout stick, which really seemed to be endowed with creative
powers that night. Wherever he poked that staff--and he did poke it
everywhere--a human being growled, or snored, or cursed. Every bush
along the hedgerow bore its occupant--often its group of four or five,
sometimes a party of a dozen or a score. One shed filled with carts
yielded at least a hundred, though the sergeant informed me it must have
been already cleared several times that evening, as he had a file of men
along the road, besides a cordon inside the Park palings, which border a
great portion of it. It is with these palings the tramps chiefly do
mischief, pulling them down to make fires along their route. Wherever my
guide found these, he trampled the fires remorselessly out, and kicked
the burning embers over the sleepers in a manner that must have been
uncomfortable. The men submitted in comparative silence; but the
ladies--where there happened to be any--exerted the privilege of their
sex, and treated us to some choice specimens of the vernacular. In one
case, a female cried out that he was kicking the fire over the
"childer;" and, sure enough, we found half-a-dozen little ones huddled
up asleep. The policeman remonstrated with her for bringing them to such
a place; but she informed us it was to "make their living." In what way,
she did not add. To us, it seemed very much like reversing the process,
and causing their death. Fancy young children camping out on the road to
the Downs at midnight! Boys of thirteen and fourteen abounded, sleeping
in large groups along the hedgerows, and sometimes out in the open
fields, where the dew lay thick.

At length, after many windings, we reached the Downs. The white booths,
following the direction of the course in their sinuous lines, looked
like stately white marble streets and crescents in the dim, uncertain
light of that hour which, between May 31 and June 1, is neither day nor
night. Under the stands and