“Till toe and heel no longer moved.”
Though the streets were dirty and the rain fell reluctantly, yet they heeded not the elemental warfare, but
“Danced and smiled, and danced and smiled again:”
hence their ornaments, like themselves, looked weather-beaten. Crowds collected round them. At 12 o’clock at noon, this was a rare opportunity for the schoolboys let out of their seats of learning and confinement. The occasional huzza, like Handel’s “Occasional Overture,” so pleasing to the ear of liberty, almost drowned the “Morris.” But at intervals the little pretty pipe drew the fancy, as it were, piping to a flock in the valley by the shade of sweet trees and the bosom of the silver brook. O! methought, what difference is here by comparison with the agile-limbed aërials of St. James’s and these untutored clowns! Yet something delightful comes home to the breast, and speaks to the memory of a rural-born creature, and recals a thousand dear recollections of hours gone down the voyage of life into eternity! To a Londoner, too, the novelty does not weary by its voluntary offering to their taste, and apposition to the season.
Lubin Brown, the piper, was an arch dark-featured person; his ear was alive to Doric melody; and he merrily played and tickled the time to his note. When he stopped to take breath, his provincial dialect scattered his wit among the gapers, and his companions were well pleased with their sprightly leader. Spagnioletti, nor Cramer, could do no more by sound nor Liston, nor Yates, by grimace. I observed his eye ever alert to the movement and weariness of his six choice youths. He was a chivalrous fellow: he had won the prize for “grinning through a horse collar” at the revel, thrown his antagonist in the “wrestling ring,” and “jumped twenty yards in a sack” to the mortification of his rivals, who lay vanquished on the green. The box-keeper, though less dignified than Mr. Spring, of Drury-lane, informed me that “he and his companions in sport” had charmed the village lasses round the maypole, and they intended sojourning in town a week or two, after which the box would be opened, and an equitable division take place, previously to the commencement of mowing and hay-harvest. He said it was the third year of their pilgrimage; that they had never disputed on the road, and were welcomed home by their sweethearts and friends, to whom they never omit the carrying a seasonable gift in a very humble “Forget me not!” or “Friendship’s Offering.”
Mr. Editor, I subscribe myself,
Yours, very sincerely.
J. R. P.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR.
Mean Temperature 58·55.