little boat, his oars as he feathers glancing in
the wet spray and golden sun like priceless
gems, though they are but humble lancewood
after all. There is Mr. Thumb, the pilot,
shoving off to board and pilot, nolens volens,
a homeward-bound ship; there is a neat little
skiff pulling in from a yacht with ladies deep
in novel reading and crochet work; there,
opposite to me, in Essex, are flat marsh lands,
and flatter meadows, and the white smoke of
another train on another railway, and
thereabouts, they tell me, lives the wicked
contractor who sold the hay which the horses
couldn't eat, and which it was very lucky they
did not eat, under the circumstances of cold
lamb connected with the forage in question;
and here, at my feet, is the grassy patch with
the strollers' booth upon it.

It is a very tumbledown edifice indeed, of
old boards and canvas, which have evidently
done service in countless grassy patches, to
say nothing of fairs, all over England. There
is an outer proscenium supported on a
platform, about which there can be no mistake
at all, for it simply consists of a few loose
boards placed on the body of a van, which
evidently serves for the conveyance of the
paraphernalia of the company through the
country. The proscenium itself, as a work of
art, is abominable; as a curiosity it is laudable.
All styles of decoration find representatives
on its surface— the intensely
PræRaphaelite prevailing; for the rules of
perspective are wholly set aside, and the avidity of
the artist for purity and brilliancy have caused
him to throw aside all except the primary
colours— red, blue and yellow. There are two
lateral doors, which mean nothing, inasmuch
as they lead to nothing, and don't open, and
upon which knockers in the Louis Quatorze
style are planted in bitter mockery. There
is a door, left centre, which is of some
signification, inasmuch as it is the box, pit, and
gallery entrance, and pay-place. The summit of
the proscenium is occupied by those useful
domestic animals, the lion and unicorn at issue,
as usual, about the possession of the crown,
and more frequently, I am afraid, getting more
brown bread than white bread or plum cake
during the progress of their hostilities; there
are a quantity of flowers painted, which, if
novelty of design and strangeness of colour
met with their reward, would infallibly carry
off the gold medal at Chiswick and all other
horticultural shows; and, finally, there are
the names of the proprietors of the booth—
Messrs. Hayes and Walton— glaring in red
lead, and yellow ochre, and blue verditer.
The " walk up " process to the booth is
apparently effected by an inclined plane,
with a few battens nailed across it at
irregular intervals— an Avernus of which the
descent will be, I opine, more facile than the
ascent.

There is a side door of ingress, however,—
the stage door, I presume, to the Theatre
Royal Dumbledowndeary. Close by it is
another van with a hood or tilt— a sort of
mixture of the Thespian and Rommaney,
or Gipsy, very picturesque. There is a
ladder leading up to this van or waggon.
Between its shafts there is at this moment,
smoking his pipe, an individual who, by
his smock frock, might be a waggoner;
by his tight-fitting trousers, a stableman;
by his squab oilskin hat a sailor; by his
broken nose and scarred complexion, a fighting
man; but who, by his wavy black hair (yet
bearing the brand of the fillet), his shaven
jaw, his stage eye, stage lip, stage step, is,
unmistakably a Thespian, a stroller, a mummer,
if you will. Can this be Hayes? Walton,
perhaps? No, Walton should be short
and stout, and, if I mistake not, bald. He
can't be both, may be one, is perchance
neither. As I muse, another man who, in
his blue frock coat, has a smack of the
butcher, crosses him, bearing a pail of water,
and enters the stage door. He puzzles me
horribly! What can he want a pail of water
for? Not for ablution— that would be too
absurd; not for drinking— that were
absurder still; perhaps for some dramatic
purpose, for something in the play. Anon
comes forth from the booth, a female form,
closely draped in a dingy shawl that might
have been worn as a toga in one of the
comedies of Meander, it looks so old. I cannot
see her face; but, as she climbs into the
waggon, I catch a glimpse of a cotton stocking—
pink? Well, not very pink; say lavendered
by dirt; and a red leather brodequin.
' Tis a dancer; and, as she disappears there
protrudes for a second from under the tilt, a
human face, and that face is white with chalk,
red with paint, and bald, with a cockscomb,
and is as the face of a clown, and I get
excited.

So do some eighty or a hundred boys and
girls, of various sizes and ages, who are standing,
like me, on the turf or gambolling on the
turf amphitheatre, some with the intention, as
I have, of patronising Hayes and Walton,
when their theatre opens. Others, oppressed
by that perpetual want of pence that vexeth
public children, contenting themselves with
seeing as much as they can of the outside of
the show, hopeless of internal admittance. It
is very good to see all these happy poor
children, not ragged, but in the decent, homely,
common clothes that country children
wear; it is very good to hear this village
murmur as

    The mingling notes come soften'd from below.

I cannot hear

   The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung;

swains don't respond or milkmaids sing in
these back parts. I can't hear

   The watchdog's voice that bays the whispering wind;

but I can hear

   The playful children just let loose from school,