has come from
fairyland, than to believe it the performance of sane and sensible people
who have mastered matter and solved the secrets of the stars.

Princes and princelings, dukes, duchesses, and all manner of coroneted
folk of the royal train are flashing past; more warriors, and lackeys,
and conquered peoples, and the pagent is over. I drift with the crowd
out of the square into a tangle of narrow streets, where the
public-houses are a-roar with drunkenness, men, women, and children mixed
together in colossal debauch. And on every side is rising the favourite
song of the Coronation:-

"Oh! on Coronation Day, on Coronation Day,
We'll have a spree, a jubilee, and shout, Hip, hip, hooray,
For we'll all be marry, drinking whisky, wine, and sherry,
We'll all be merry on Coronation Day."

The rain is pouring down. Up the street come troops of the auxiliaries,
black Africans and yellow Asiatics, beturbaned and befezed, and coolies
swinging along with machine guns and mountain batteries on their heads,
and the bare feet of all, in quick rhythm, going _slish, slish, slish_
through the pavement mud. The public-houses empty by magic, and the
swarthy allegiants are cheered by their British brothers, who return at
once to the carouse.

"And how did you like the procession, mate?" I asked an old man on a
bench in Green Park.

"'Ow did I like it? A bloomin' good chawnce, sez I to myself, for a
sleep, wi' all the coppers aw'y, so I turned into the corner there, along
wi' fifty others. But I couldn't sleep, a-lyin' there an' thinkin' 'ow
I'd worked all the years o' my life an' now 'ad no plyce to rest my 'ead;
an' the music comin' to me, an' the cheers an' cannon, till I got almost
a hanarchist an' wanted to blow out the brains o' the Lord Chamberlain."

Why the Lord Chamberlain I could not precisely see, nor could he, but
that was the way he felt, he said conclusively, and them was no more
discussion.

As night drew on, the city became a blaze of light. Splashes of colour,
green, amber, and ruby, caught the eye at every point, and "E. R.," in
great crystal letters and backed by flaming gas, was everywhere. The
crowds in the streets increased by hundreds of thousands, and though the
police sternly put down mafficking, drunkenness and rough play abounded.
The tired workers seemed to have gone mad with the relaxation and
excitement, and they surged and danced down the streets, men and women,
old and young