halt at the Cock at Sutton, and at all the
hostelries beyond that until we come to the
open country, when, there being no more half
or three-quarter-way houses to stop at, Mr.
Povey, by general desire, draws the two vans off
the road upon a patch of grass, where we immediately
proceed to consume the brisket in a regular
and organised manner. Before we resumed
our seats, a little difference had occurred
between two young men respecting two young
women, which, as we were passing through the
village of Epsom, broke out into an angry ebullition,
mingled with female screams, that may
possibly have suggested to the Epsom schoolmaster
looking over his garden wall, that we
were a party of Romans and Sabines proceeding
to the Isthmian games. (Not having Adam's
antiquities at hand, I take Lord Palmerston
as my classical guide, he being generally a safe
card to go by.) These little differences, however,
were soon arranged, and precisely at noon,
Mr. Povey, whipping his horses up for the last
grand display of mettle, drove us triumphantly
on to the course. Our carriages were drawn up
on the brow of the hill, overlooking the gipsies'
tents, and considerably in front of the grand
stand. We did not pay anything to go on the
course, and none of our fashionable friends came
round cadging for brisket and stout, as I understood
was the custom in another rank a little
higher up; and this was fortunate, for the
brisket was wearing a very scrappy aspect, and
the stout was at that low ebb when malt
liquor endeavours to make up for other shortcomings
by assuming an extraordinary amount
of body.

Leaving the vans to Mr. Povey, who had seen
a many Derbies, and fathomed all their empty
pleasures, and drained a few of their empty
bottles, when his patrons were not looking, we,
the company which he had brought down on the
present occasion for the moderate charge of five
shillings a head, pikes included, dispersed ourselves
over the hill and the dale to enjoy ourselves.
This is what we did. We played at three sticks
a penny; we guessed which thimble the pea was
under, and guessed wrong; we shied little balls
at pins, and knocked them down instead of going
through them; we raced up and down the hill;
we rode on donkeys (I am sure that young man
thought I had a design to ride away with Matilda
to far distant lands); and went into gipsy tents
and had our fortunes told.

Now here I come to the occasion when there
was very nearly being blood between me and that
young man. The gipsy was telling Matilda's
fortune, and she told her that there were two
young men in love with her, one dark and the
other fair, but that the dark young man loved
her best, and would be her future 'usband.
Now I was the dark young man, and when
the fair young man heard what the gipsy
said, he looked clasp-knives—especially that
particular clasp-knife with the horn handle
which he had used to carve the pork-pie at the
fête champêtre down the road—at the dark
young man, and suggested having a quantity,
not precisely stated, of the fluid necessary to
his existence. Had not the bell rung at that
moment for the great race of the clay—on which
the fair young man stood to lose half-a-crown—
it is possible that the fluid might have flowed.

Having attacked the nose-bags early, the nosebags
gave in early, and, after the race, we were
driven to recruit our exhausted energies, so far
as our means would allow, in tents and booths,
where the beer was as excited and frothy as the
company in general, and where the boiled beef
stood all over in a state of cold perspiration, as if
it had betted rashly and was afraid of losing.
There was music in these booths, and we danced
a little, and sang a little, and, becoming free and
light of heart, stuck dolls in our hats, some of us
even reaching that point of happiness which
manifests itself in the assumption of false noses.
We were in no hurry to leave the Downs. Did
you ever know a gallery boy leave the theatre
until the last piece was played out to the end,
even if it were one o'clock in the morning? It
is all very well for the stalls and the boxes, who
enjoy themselves every night in the week; but
the gallery, which has a treat only now and then,
likes to get the full value for its sixpence.

We were very jolly on the road home. We
gave an itinerant cornet-à-piston a lift, and he
played to us all the way. We chaffed the
genteel people in the drags and phaetons, and
asked the gentlemen in white hats who their
hatters were, which was the popular piece of
wit at that time. We exchanged about half
a quartern of gin—the last of our liquor—for a
bottle of sparkling Moselle with some young
Guardsmen, who admired Matilda, and once
more stirred up the jealousy of her young man,
who nevertheless partook of the Moselle. We
stopped at every house of entertainment on the
road, and when there was no house of entertainment
to stop at, we drew up our caravan by the
wayside, and disported ourselves on the grass.
A poet of the last century would have called us
"jocund swains." It was as near as possible
the half-way house where we found a fiddle
going in the parlour, and we all danced polkas,
while Mr. Povey unyoked the horses, and
washed out their mouths. I never knew such
horses as Mr. Povey's for wanting their mouths
washed out, and always when he stopped for that
humane purpose Mr. Povey washed out his own
mouth, but not generally at his own expense.

We were not so lively towards the latter part
of the journey home; but we were happy, and
the young women slumbered peacefully in an
engaged manner on the shoulders of the young
men—except in one or two instances, when the
young men themselves slumbered in an unengaged
manner on the floor of the van—and
the cornet woke up at the corner of Little Green-street
to signalise our return with a blast of
triumph. We paid Mr. Povey five shillings a
head, and bidding him good night—or rather
morning, for it was past twelve—assured him
with all sincerity that we had never spent a
more jolly day in the whole course of our
lives.