"never sees any pleasure." Her Derby days
are over long ago.

The company began to assemble in Little
Green-street at six o'clock in the morning. The
vans—there were two of them—were ready to
start, and Mr. Povey, the proprietor, resplendent
in a red plush velvet waistcoat—whose lustre,
by the way, was considerably dimmed by a very
dingy white hat—was pacing up and down on
the pavement opposite the shop all anxiety to
mount the box and be off. The excursionists
arrived; generally in the order observed by the
animals on entering the ark; that is to say, two
and two, male and female, and this arrangement
ensured so much natural discipline, that there
would have been no difficulty whatever in
making an immediate start, had it not been for
the eighteen-gallon cask of stout, subscribed for
by a section of the party, which, relying upon
our utter ignorance of the principle of the inclined
plane, gave itself up to inert obstinacy, and,
for some time, resisted all our efforts to lift it on
to the tail-board of the front van. It was got
there at length; but some further delay was
occasioned in consequence of an energetic young
man, exhibiting a large expanse of shirt front,
rashly volunteering to knock in the tap with half
of a paving-stone. Here again the want of
scientific knowledge was keenly felt, particularly
by the energetic young man with the shirt front,
and his sweetheart in a new white muslin with blue
spots, who, owing to the tap not having been
previously turned off, received the first pint of the
stout all over their finery, a mishap which established
a cause of quarrel between the pair
for the rest of the day, and may, for all I know,
have led to the final cutting of their loves in
two. In such small incidents doth lurk our
human fate—which sounds like a poetical quotation,
but it isn't, at least not that I know of.

Well, we got into the vans two and two, as
if we had been pairing off for wholesale matrimony,
stowed away our nose-bags and stone
bottles under the seats, lighted our pipes, put
our arms round our sweethearts' waists, and
away we went rattling up Little Green-street,
with a crowd of boys round us hurrahing like
mad. It was a very fine start; but unhappily
for the éclat of tearing by the opposition greengrocer's
in a manner to make the opposition
envious, a halt was suddenly called. There
were eighteen gallons of beer in the advance-guard
van, but there was nothing to drink it out
of. Our groom in waiting, who was the greengrocer's
boy, went back for a vessel, and returned
presently with the gooseberry measure, which, at
a more brilliant period of its career, had been
what is publicly known as a pint pot. It had not
been scoured lately, and it was rather battered,
but a young man of the company, who appeared
to be familiar with the operation, deftly gave it
a rubbing up with a handful of straw gathered
from the floor of the van, and off we go again;
a young man on the box with Mr. Povey signalling
our triumphant departure to the early
risers of Tottenham-court-road, by unfurling a
blue cotton pocket-handkerchief in the breeze.
I don't know on what pretence of necessity or
convenience it was that we called at so many
places between Tottenham-court-road and
Charing-Cross; but certain it is that we did
pull up at a great many places (mostly public),
and were a very long time on the way. Possibly
Mr. Povey was anxious to show his acquaintances
that he, his family, and the nobility,
gentry, and public in general, his patrons, were
going to the Derby in style. I was getting
rather uneasy at Charing-Cross. It was drawing
very near the time when staid business men, with
whom we all have some acquaintance, are in the
habit of making their way towards the City, and
here am I in a greengrocer's open van, the
driver smoking a short pipe, each young man
with his arm round his young woman's waist,
all joining in a popular chorus, and the groom
in attendance running behind the front van, and
drawing stout from the eighteen-gallon cask
into the gooseberry measure! What if the
respectable Mr. Jones, of the respectable firm of
Jones Jones and Co., should see me! I think
it was my suspicious attempts to get very close
to Matilda, and so hide myself from the public
view, that first aroused the jealousy of Matilda's
young man, and eventually, as the sequel will
show, nearly led to blood.

The festivities began early. It was, if I remember
rightly, when we hove in sight of St.
Giles's church, and marked the flight of time
by the clock of that unfashionable fane, that we
began to pull the nose-bags from under the seats.
Generally, the refection was brisket of beef,
with a good proportion of fat, mortar'd in between
two substantial slices of bread with a lick
of mustard. At a point nearer St. George's,
it would have been à la fourchette; here, under
the shadow of St. Giles's, it was à la clasp-knife.
Our Ganymede, on account of the heat and his
onerous duties in running backwards and forwards
to the tail-board of the leading van for
beer, here asked permission to divest himself of
his shoes and stockings. Permission is granted
by Mr. Povey, who draws up at the Houses of
Parliament to have a drop of "that beer" that's
going so liberally behind. Mr. Povey recognising
his own measure, looks suspiciously into
the depths of the stout for tops and tails of
gooseberries, but not being able to detect them,
owing to the great body of the liquor, " chances
it," and empties the pewter at one swig, never
before having realised how very far short of a
pint it was. Mr. Povey being lighted up with
a Pickwick, as being more respectable than a
short pipe to smoke through Clapham, our
caravan starts off again and we are much cheered
by the populace, in respect particularly of our
eighteen-gallon cask, which bespeaks large
means and boundless hospitality. At Clapham
we all feel that we have done a very long stage
of the journey, and get out in a body to vary
the private provision with a few public-house
biscuits and just a little drop of something
short, while Mr. Povey waters the horses and
rubs them down, preparatory to another start.
We make a great many stages on the road. We