Along the High-street of this military village
runs a single line of railway, devoted to the
carriage of coal and building material for the
large barrack streets that are still being erected
for the accommodation of future cavalry
regiments.   Every hour of the day a train of luggage
trucks is panting along this tramway, and the
only wonder is, that the driver who conducts
the engine is not attired in some variety of
military undress costume.  The omnibuses that
come in at intervals from the different railway
stations are more often loaded with scarlet
heroes in the shape of non-commissioned officers,
than with the dingy-coated civilian who is always
smoking the pipe of peace.   The old familiar
face of the Hansom cab is seen in the one main
street of this mushroom village, as well as its
companion vehicle that runs upon four wheels.
A little search will discover a well-stocked
stable-yard, as full of these metropolitan
conveyances as any cabman's mews in town.

The old red-brick poor-house has been taken
possession of—has been legally purchased, I
suppose, from the parochial authorities—as an
hospital for invalided soldiers.  Walking in a
small, dusty garden, or sitting on benches under
the shadow of the side walls, are a number of
convalescents, dressed in light blue serge
trousers, jackets, and night-caps, which make them
look like comic performers of the Pierrot class
in a circus of French horse-riders.

The mushroom village does not seem able to
increase its building accommodation fast enough.
Twenty thousand men (the number at present
stationed in barracks, huts, and tents) require
amusement; to say nothing of the officers, who
require various little luxuries, and furniture for
their quarters.    Scaffold-poles, and unfinished
brickwork are seen sprouting up at each end of
the straggling mile of shops and houses, while
the ringing of trowels and the noise of hammers
striking nails into wooden planks mingle with
the incessant roll of drums from the barracks
and the blowing of bugles from the camp
camp beyond an intervening hill.  Certain
enterprising speculators are not content to
wait for the slow, substantial work of bricklayers
and stonemasons, and they have erected
little roadside zinc structures in which to carry
on their commerce, imported from an emigrant's
house depôt in London in a few hours, and put
up in a single night. The wooden shed is not
unrepresented in the town, any more than in the
camp, and the whole line of houses—large and
small—is joined together in some places with
clothes'-lines of dangling stockings and shirts.
Bright, new, glaring shops are opened for active
business before they are painted, or finished;
and the stock-in-trade of one furnishing draper
(the chief warehouseman in the place) has fairly
oozed out into the road.

The titles of most houses have a warlike
character, and those who do not advertise
themselves as being "by appointment to the camp,"
attract attention by sticking up "Sebastopol"
or "Waterloo House,"  the "British Hero," and
the "Crimean Arms."  The road in front of
these places is either the dusty highway which
has few traces of country left; a patch of
mangy common which still exists to show the
miserable little plot of village that answered
to the name of Aldershott half a dozen years
ago, or a layer of egg-shaped stones thrown
down in a swampy piece of ground before the
crowded doors.

Towards evening the British soldier comes
out to be amused.  If he is quartered in the
barracks, or the huts, and is not under canvas,
nor yet upon guard, he is at liberty up to half-
past nine P.M ., at which time he is summoned
back to his quarters by the firing of guns, and
the sound of regimental bands.   A special order
will allow him to enjoy the seductive gaieties of
the town long after this time, but these
privileges are granted to very few.  If he neglects
to return to his disconsolate regiment at the
appointed period, he suffers for it the next day,
and several following days, by the extra
exertion of "pack drill," if not by a more severe
punishment; for the shadow of the hateful
"cat" still hovers over the pet military settlement,
still comes up through the dust and theatrical
glory of a sham field-day, still dims the brightness
of the medal and the cross.

About seven o'clock P.M. the British soldier
rushes into the mushroom town of Aldershott
for entertainment, and the mushroom town of
Aldershott responds most vigorously to the
call. The private soldier is able to save about
threepence-halfpenny or fourpence out of his
thirteenpence a-day, and this, by a mutual
arrangement with some comrade who is on duty
for that particular night, is swelled into sevenpence
or eightpence.  A party of six men will
sometimes club together, making a common fund
of their individual savings, and this will give the
one man out, the command of about two shillings.

When two or three thousand soldiers are
prowling about, with only two or three hours
of time before them, and only fourpence each in
their pockets, it is not surprising that a number
of beer-shops should strive to commend
themselves to their notice. There are wooden beer-
shops, and brick beer-shops, central public-
houses (those immediately opposite the leading
barracks, and the road over the hill into the
camp), and zinc beer-shops, pitched at the
extreme end of the present town-line. There is a
very primitive, early Australian mingling of
occupations exhibited in some of these mushroom
taverns, and while it is probable that you
could have your hair properly cut by some of
the landlords who draw a rather muddy ale for
the refreshment of the British soldier in his
hours of relaxation, it is certain that one public-
house displays an announcement in its windows
about photographic likenesses being taken within
at a moderate price.  There have been many
combinations over the tavern counter before
this, but it was reserved for Aldershott to get
rid of the conventional sandwich which has
hitherto—for fourpence—gone with the glass of
ale, and to substitute a doubtless highly artistic
portrait in its place.