"What are those?" asks Bunker in the carriage behind us, pointing to the old brass guns which sit on the wall like Humpty Dumpty.
"Them, sir," says Cabby, "was put there by 'Enry the Heighth, and this 'ere wall was the purtection of the town when the Frenchmen hassaulted it."
"Ho!" says Bunker, contemptuously. "Just fancy one of our ironclads paying any attention to the barking of those popguns!"
Whereupon the horse starts again, and we go lazily on, Cabby dropping in a word of enlightenment here and there to the effect that this old tumble-down part of the ancient wall is the celebrated Arcade, which formed part of the wall of the King's Palace; and this queer old lane running up through the walls like a sewer is Cuckoo lane; and that is Bugle street, where in olden times the warden blew; and here are the remains of Canute's palace, with its elliptical and circular arches and curious mouldings.
Discharging the cab in the High street, we walk about. In a shop where we pause for a moment there is a quartette of half-naked barbarians, such as, with all our boasted varieties of humanity, were never yet seen in New York. We have abundant Chinese and Japanese there, and occasionally an Arab or a Turk, and the word African means with us a man and a brother behind our chair at dinner or wielding a razor in a barber-shop. These men here are pure barbarians, just landed from a vessel direct from Africa. Hideously tattooed, and their heads shaved in regular ridges of black wool, with narrow patches of black scalp between, they are here in a small tradesman's shop in bowery England buying shirts. They know not a word of English, but chatter among themselves the most horrible lingo known to the Hamitic group of tongues. They grimace in a frightful manner, and skip and dance, and writhe their half-naked bodies into the most exaggerated contortions known to the language of signs. The dignified English salesmen are at their wits' end how to treat them. The instinct of the British shopkeeper fights desperately with his disposition to be shocked. From the Ashantee gentlemen's gestures it can only be concluded that white shirts are wanted, but when white shirts are shown the negroes make furious objection to the plaited bosoms. They want shirts such as are fashionable at home. It is easy to be seen that they are Dandy Jims in Africa. They are all young, and, in a sense, spruce. One of them carries a little switch cane, evidently just bought: while he examines the shirts, testing the strength of the stuff by pulling it with his two hands, he holds his cane between his bare legs for safe-keeping.
Sitting in the billiard-room of the hotel in the evening smoking our cigars, Bunker and I are accosted by a brisk little man, who asks us if we play billiards. Bunker doesn't. I do sometimes at home, but not the English game.
"Oh, we play the 'Merican game too. 'Appy to play the 'Merican game with you, sir."
"Try him a game," says Bunker. "It won't hurt you."
Not liking to refuse an invitation from a polite Englishman, who appears to be a stranger here, I consent. This is billiard-room etiquette the world over.
The cue is like a whip-stock. It positively runs down to a point not bigger than a shirt-button, and it bends like a switch. The balls are not much larger than marbles. To make up for this, the table is big enough for a back yard, broad, high, dull of cushion, and with six huge pockets. I am ignominiously beaten. My ball jumps like a living thing. It hops off the table upon the floor at almost every shot, and when it does not go on the floor it goes into one of the six yawning pockets. The pockets bear the same relative proportion to the balls that a tea-cup bears to a French pea. At the end of the game my ball has been everywhere except where I intended it to go, and I have "scratched" thirty.