HAMLET
A Constitutional in the Park
In the Row
A Park Orator
Separated from these people by another social gulf, and toward Marble Arch, are the unemployed listening to the park actors and park orators. If you are tall enough to look over the heads of an English crowd you will see in some of these groups strolling players at work. In the centre of one group a short, red-faced park orator declares that a Prime Minister has robbed him.
The farther away from these shady paths the sadder London is. Among them foreigners feel at home. Little home-sick law students from India may mope in Piccadilly, but in Hyde Park they look happy. Once there the British soldier is no longer war-like; he becomes helpless and happy, surrounded by nature and under the influence of some pink-cheeked domestic.
In the early part of the day the parks are occupied by very young people; the visitors become older with the day. The nurses and their charges leave, and evening finds an old lady leaning on her husband’s arm, walking slowly along their favorite path, while their carriage follows at a little distance. And as night comes on they roll back into the great city among the never-ceasing tread of feet, past the side-walk artist sitting by his pictures on the pavement, looking anxiously at the passers-by—and the park’s day is done—a curtain of darkness falls on the great stage; the peacocks go to roost in its trees; the ducks are undisturbed by wet dogs, and the Serpentine’s small fish are no longer in danger of bent pins; and the park, London’s kind friend and good physician, is resting.