THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE
APPRENTICES.

IN FIVE CHAPTERS. CHAPTER THE FIFTH.

Two of the many passengers by a certain
late Sunday evening train, Mr. Thomas Idle
and Mr. Francis Goodchild, yielded up their
tickets at a little rotten platform (converted
into artificial touch-wood by smoke and ashes),
deep in the manufacturing bosom of Yorkshire.
A mysterious bosom it appeared, upon a
damp, dark, Sunday night, dashed through in
the train to the music of the whirling wheels,
the panting of the engine, and the part-singing
of hundreds of third-class excursionists,
whose vocal efforts "bobbed arayound" from
sacred to profane, from hymns, to our
transatlantic sisters the Yankee Gal and Mairy
Anne, in a remarkable way. There seemed to
have been some large vocal gathering near to
every lonely station on the line. No town
was visible, no village was visible, no light
was visible; but, a multitude got out singing,
and a multitude got in singing, and
the second multitude took up the hymns,
and adopted our transatlantic sisters, and
sang of their own egregious wickedness, and
of their bobbing arayound, and of how the
ship it was ready and the wind it was fair,
and they were bayound for the sea, Mairy
Anne, until they in their turn became a
getting-out multitude, and were replaced by
another getting-in multitude, who did the
same. And at every station, the getting-in
multitude, with an artistic reference to the
completeness of their chorus, incessantly cried,
as with one voice while scuffling into the
carriages, "We mun aa' gang toogither!"

The singing and the multitudes had trailed
off as the lonely places were left and the
great towns were neared, and the way had
lain as silently as a train's way ever can,
over the vague black streets of the great
gulfs of towns, and among their branchless
woods of vague black chimneys. These towns
looked, in the cinderous wet, as though they
had one and all been on fire and were just
put out—a dreary and quenched panorama,
many miles long.

Thus, Thomas and Francis got to Leeds;
of which enterprising and important
commercial centre it may be observed with
delicacy, that you must either like it very much
or not at all. Next day, the first of the
Race-Week, they took train to Doncaster.

And instantly the character, both of
travellers and of luggage, entirely changed, and
no other business than race-business any
longer existed on the face of the earth. The
talk was all of horses and "John Scott."
Guards whispered behind their hands to
station-masters, of horses and John Scott.
Men in cut-away coats and speckled cravats
fastened with peculiar pins, and with the
large bones of their legs developed under
tight trousers, so that they should look as
much as possible like horses' legs, paced up
and down by twos at junction-stations,
speaking low and moodily of horses and
John Scott. The young clergyman in the
black strait-waistcoat, who occupied the
middle seat of the carriage, expounded in his
peculiar pulpit-accent to the young and
lovely Reverend Mrs. Crinoline, who occupied
the opposite middle-seat, a few passages
of rumour relative to "Oartheth, my love, and
Mithter John Eth-cott." A bandy vagabond,
with a head like a Dutch cheese, in a fustian
stable-suit, attending on a horse-box and going
about the platforms with a halter hanging
round his neck like a Calais burgher of the
ancient period much degenerated, was courted
by the best society, by reason of what he had
to hint, when not engaged in eating straw,
concerning "t'harses and Joon Scott." The
engine-driver himself, as he applied one eye
to his large stationary double-eye-glass on
the engine, seemed to keep the other open,
sideways, upon horses and John Scott.

Breaks and barriers at Doncaster station
to keep the crowd off; temporary wooden
avenues of ingress and egress, to help the
crowd on. Forty extra porters sent down
for this present blessed Race-Week, and all
of them making up their betting-books in the
lamp-room or somewhere else, and none of them
to come and touch the luggage. Travellers
disgorged into an open space, a howling
wilderness of idle men. All work but race-
work at a stand-still; all men at a stand-
still. "Ey my word! Deant ask noon o' us
to help wi't' luggage. Bock your opinion
loike a mon. Coom! Dang it, coom, t'harses
and Joon Scott!" In the midst of the idle
men, all the fly horses and omnibus horses of
Doncaster and parts adjacent, rampant,