"Oh, Lizer," I heard the smallest one say, "I do wish I could git one o' them flowers! jest one geranium, for ter stick in my 'air at Sunday-school ter-morrer! They'd niver miss it"!
"Certingly not! The p'leaceman 'ud be after you, pretty sharp," says the elder child, severely. "You know 'ow Bert caught it, three weeks back, for on'y a-breakin orf of two daffies, and one of 'em nearly dead too! Well, (relenting), "you may git me jest a few, if you kin do it so's the p'leaceman can't see".... Rosie, shet it!" as the younger girl clutched at some flowers: "I see 'im a-comin' towards us, this minnit! No, if you please, we ain't done nothin', sir! My sister an' me, sir, we was on'y jest a-lookin' at the flowers, an' saying as 'ow beautiful they 'ad grown, since this Sat'day gone a week.... Our garding ain't got no show to equil them, and we ain't got no cut flowers, for onst, in ma's drorin'-room; and these 'ere is grown that beautiful."
"You was a-goin' to 'elp 'em grow, wasn't you?" said the policeman, good-naturedly enough: "I see you a-stretchin' over them railin's! Your garding's a alley, that's wot it is! an' your drorin'-room is jest a three-pair-model, I back!... I know your sort! 'Ere, tike yerselves orf, double quick!"
The ignorant in such matters may, perhaps, vaguely wonder, in Regent's Park, why the comfortable chairs provided, apparently, for man's delectation, are all deserted of the multitude, and why, on the other hand, the iron seats are crammed to repletion? The explanation is a simple one. The chairs cost a penny each to sit on! It is, however, not unusual to see a stray marauder occupy one of these sacred resting-places for a stolen minute of bliss, and, on seeing the approach of the Guardian of the Park furniture (whence such guardians spring up is ever a mystery), rise and absent himself in well-feigned abstraction.
The Reformer.
Regent's Park, like Hyde Park, is a focus of itinerant lecturers and preachers. These have apparently established a kind of "Sunday right" to the upper part of the long avenue of trees beyond the flower-gardens. Here, as in the larger park, may be seen "cranks" of every kind. Thus, one lecturer will hold up to obloquy an unkind caricature of Mr. Chamberlain, representing the great man with the addition of horns and hoofs; another, proclaiming the gospel of Jingoism, will shout himself hoarse in the attempt to drown his adversary. (Political meetings, however, may now possibly be regarded with disfavour by the authorities, the Boer War having lately rendered many of them somewhat picturesque in incident.) Under another big tree, a Revivalist meeting will be held, accompanied by sundry groans and sobs, and varied at intervals by hymns sung to the accompaniment of a harmonium or a small piano-organ. The first beginnings of lectures, as of righteousness, are hard. One poor orator, on the outskirts of the crowd, I saw myself arrive on the scene, and "work up" his lecture to the unsympathetic and goggle-eyed audience of a small cockney nursemaid, a perambulator, and two wailing babies. I quite felt for that poor man; nevertheless, he persevered, and in only five minutes auditors had already begun to trickle in. (A considerable percentage of the Park congregations, I may here observe, had no "fixed city," no abiding convictions; they wandered about here and there, from one preacher to another, "just as fate or fancy carried"; or, rather, to whichever of the said preachers happened at the moment to be the most emphatic.) With lectures al fresco, as with other things, it would appear to be only the premier pas qui coûte; and soon the would-be orator had a distinguished and motley following. What, exactly, he was lecturing about, it is really beyond me to say, for my attention was largely woolgathering about the crowd; but he seemed, like Mr. Chadband, of immortal memory, to repeat himself a good deal, and to be very angry indeed about something or other. Indeed, I doubt whether the majority of his audience quite understood the orator's drift, but they knew that he was bellowing with all the strength of his lungs, and Englishmen always respect a man who makes sufficient noise. The lecturer's anger seemed, strangely enough, to be directed against poor, unoffending Regent's Park itself:
"For twenty years," he kept reiterating, "for twenty years Regent's Park has been allowed to speak, unhindered, under this very tree. For twenty years it has found its voice, ay, and its pence, too, here.... Is it to continue to find them, or not? That is the question.... Does Regent's Park wish to sit tamely under insult? to lie down to be crushed? to bend its back to the tyrant?" (here the speaker, in his fervour, seemed to get a trifle mixed in his similes.)
"'Ear, 'ear," said a chubby baker's boy, who had stopped for a moment to listen; and one of the forgotten babies in the perambulator wailed.