gay little structure of wood, painted and gilded, that
looked like a refreshment-stall. From the southern side of the said
orchard ran a long road, chequered over with the shadow of tall old pear
trees, at the end of which showed the high tower of the Parliament House,
or Dung Market.

A strange sensation came over me; I shut my eyes to keep out the sight of
the sun glittering on this fair abode of gardens, and for a moment there
passed before them a phantasmagoria of another day. A great space
surrounded by tall ugly houses, with an ugly church at the corner and a
nondescript ugly cupolaed building at my back; the roadway thronged with
a sweltering and excited crowd, dominated by omnibuses crowded with
spectators. In the midst a paved be-fountained square, populated only by
a few men dressed in blue, and a good many singularly ugly bronze images
(one on the top of a tall column). The said square guarded up to the
edge of the roadway by a four-fold line of big men clad in blue, and
across the southern roadway the helmets of a band of horse-soldiers, dead
white in the greyness of the chilly November afternoon--I opened my eyes
to the sunlight again and looked round me, and cried out among the
whispering trees and odorous blossoms, "Trafalgar Square!"

"Yes," said Dick, who had drawn rein again, "so it is. I don't wonder at
your finding the name ridiculous: but after all, it was nobody's business
to alter it, since the name of a dead folly doesn't bite. Yet sometimes
I think we might have given it a name which would have commemorated the
great battle which was fought on the spot itself in 1952,--that was
important enough, if the historians don't lie."

"Which they generally do, or at least did," said the old man. "For
instance, what can you make of this, neighbours? I have read a muddled
account in a book--O a stupid book--called James' Social Democratic
History, of a fight which took place here in or about the year 1887 (I am
bad at dates). Some people, says this story, were going to hold a ward-
mote here, or some such thing, and the Government of London, or the
Council, or the Commission, or what not other barbarous half-hatched body
of fools, fell upon these citizens (as they were then called) with the
armed hand. That seems too ridiculous to be true; but according to this
version of the story, nothing much came of it, which certainly _is_ too
ridiculous to be true."

"Well," quoth I, "but after all your