CHAPTER IX.

It's O to be a slaveAlong with the barbarous Turk,Where woman has never a soul to save,If this is Christian Work!

Was he aware that here, in the heart of Christian London, without going farther east than Bethnal Green, there had existed from time immemorial, as there exists still, a genuine Slave Market? Such there is, and actually so named; less romantic, indeed, than that we read of in "Don Juan," or used tosee on the Adelphi boards in the drama of the "Octoroon"—but still interesting in its way to those who have a penchant for that grotesque side of London life where the sublime and the ridiculous sometimes blend so curiously.

With only the vague address of Bethnal Green and the date of Tuesday morning to guide me, I set out for Worship Street Police Court, thinking it possible to gain some further particulars from the police. I found those functionaries civil, indeed, but disposed to observe even more than official reticence about the Slave Market. They told me the locality precisely enough, but were even more vague as to the hour than my own impressions. In fact, the sum of what I could gain from them was, in slightly Hibernian language, that there was nothing to see, and I could see it any time on a Tuesday morning when I chose to go down White Street, Bethnal Green. Leaving the Court and inquiring my route to White Street, I found that it ran off to the right some way down the Bethnal Green Road from Shoreditch Station. Having turned out of the main thoroughfare, you proceed down one of those characteristic East End streets where every small householder lives behind an elaborate bright green door with portentous knocker, going on until an arch of the Great Eastern Railway spans the road. Arriving at this point any time between the hours of eight and half-past nine on a Monday or Tuesday morning, you have no need to be told thatthis is the East London Slave Market—supposing you knew such a thing as a slave market was to be seen in East London at all.

There was, indeed, nothing resembling Byron's graphic description in "Don Juan." Our English slaves were all apparently of one nation, and there were no slave merchants. The hundred young ladies and gentlemen, of all ages from seven to seventeen, were, as they would have expressed it, "on their own hook." Ranged under the dead brick wall of the railway arch, there was a generally mouldy appearance about them. Instead of a picturesque difference of colour, there was on every visage simply a greater or less degree of that peculiar neutral tint, the unmistakable unlovely hue of London dirt. In this respect, too, they differed from the fresh country lads and lasses one sees at a hiring in the North. They were simply male and female City Arabs, with that superabundant power of combining business and pleasure which characterizes their race. The young gentlemen, in the intervals of business—and it seemed to be all interval and no business—devoted themselves to games at buttons. Each of the young ladies—I am afraid to sayhowyoung—had her cavalier, and applied herself to very pronounced flirtation. The language of one and all certainly fulfilled the baptismal promise of their sponsors, if the poor little waifs ever had any—for it was very "vulgar tongue" indeed; and there was lots of it. The great sensationof the morning was a broken window in an unoffending tradesman's shop—a far from unusual occurrence, as I learnt from the sufferer. This led to a slave hunt on the part of the single policeman who occasionally showed himself to keep as quiet as might be the seething mass of humanity; and the young lady or gentleman who was guilty of the damage was "off market" for the morning—while the suffering tradesman was assailed with a volley of abuse, couched in strongest Saxon, for meekly protesting against the demolition of his window-pane.

The scene was most characteristic—very unlike the genteel West End Servants' Registry, where young ladies and gentlemen's gentlemen saunter in to find places with high wages and the work "put out." It was on Tuesday morning, and a little late in the day, that I timed my visit; and I was informed that the Market was somewhat flat. Certainly, one could not apply to it the technicalities of the Stock Exchange, and say that little boys were "dull," or girls, big or little, "inactive;" but early on a Monday morning is, it appears, the time to see the Slave Market in full swing. Strangely enough, so far as I could judge, it was all slaves and no buyers—or, rather, hirers. I did not see the symptom of a bargain being struck, though I was informed that a good many small tradesmen do patronize the Market, for shop-boys, nurse-girls, or household drudges. I do not know whether my appearance was particularly attractive; but thenumber of offers I received from domestics of all kinds would have sufficed to stock half-a-dozen establishments. "Want a boy, sir?" "A girl for the childer, sir?" said the juveniles, while the offers of the adult ladies were more emphatic and less quotable. All, of course, was mere badinage, or, as they would have called it, "chaff," and it was meant good-humouredly enough; though, had I been a legitimate hirer, I do not know that I should have been tempted to add to my household from this source. Indeed, there were some not exactly pleasant reflections cast on the Slave Market by those whom I consulted as to its merits. It was not unusual, I was told, for slaves who were hired on a Monday to turn up again on Tuesday morning, either from incompatibility of temper on the part of domestic and superior, or from other causes unexplained. Tuesday morning is, in fact, to a large extent, the mere residuum either of Monday's unhired incapables, or of "returns." And yet, as I looked around, I saw—as where does one not see?—some fair young faces; girls who might have played with one's little children all the better because they were so nearly children themselves; and boys of preternatural quickness, up to any job, and capable of being useful—ay, and even ornamental—members of society, if only that dreadful Bethnal Green twang could have been eradicated. The abuse of the mother tongue on the part even of these children was simply frightful. If this were so in their playful moods, what—onecould not help thinking—would it be if any dispute arose on a contested point of domestic economy: as, for instance, the too rapid disappearance of the cold mutton, or sudden absence of master's boots?

There was a garrulous cobbler whose stall bordered on the Market, and his panacea for all the evils the Slave Market brought with it was the London School Board. "Why don't the officers come down and collar some o' them youngsters, sir?" Why, indeed? At present the Slave Market is undoubtedly a nuisance; but there is no reason why, under proper police supervision, it should not become a local convenience. The ways of East London differ in all respects from those of the West, and Servants' Registries would not pay. Masters and servants are alike too poor to advertise; and there seems to be no reason why the Slave Market, under a changed name, and with improved regulations, may not as really supply a want as the country "hirings" do. The Arab, at present, is not to be trusted with too much liberty. Both male and female have odd Bedouin ways of their own, requiring considerable and judicious manipulation to mould them to the customs of civilized society. The respectable residents, tired of the existing state of things, look not unreasonably, as ratepayers, to the School Board to thin down the children, and the police to keep the adults in order. Under such conditions, the Bethnal Green Slave Market may yet become a useful institution.

I was walking the other day in one of the pleasant western suburbs, and rashly sought a short cut back; when, as is generally the case, I found that the longer would have been much the nearer way home. Before I knew it, I was involved in the labyrinths of that region, sacred to washerwomen and kindred spirits, known as Kensal New Town; and my further progress was barred by the intervention of the Paddington Canal, which is spanned at rare intervals in this locality by pay-bridges, to the great discomfort of the often impecunious natives. There was not even one of these at hand, or my halfpenny would have been paid under protest; so I had to wander like a lost sprite among the network of semi-genteel streets that skirt that most ungenteel thoroughfare, the Kensal New Town Road, and forthwith I began to find the neighbourhood papered with placards, announcing a "Tea and Experience Meeting" at a local hall, under the presidency of the Free Church pastor, for the following Monday evening. Bakers' shops bristled with the handbills, and they studded the multitudinous pork butchers' windows in juxtaposition withcruel-looking black puddings and over-fat loin chops. I determined I would go, if not to the tea, certainly to the "Experience," for I like novel experiences of all kinds: and this would certainly be new, whether edifying or not.

I got at length out of the labyrinth, and on the following Monday ventured once more within its mazes, though not exactly at six o'clock, which was the hour appointed for the preliminary experience of tea. I had experienced that kind of thing once or twice before, and never found myself in a position of such difficulty as on those occasions. In the first place I do not care about tea, when it is good; but loathe it when boiled in a washhouse copper, and poured out from a large tin can, of which it tastes unpleasantly. But, then again, the quantity as well as the quality of the viands to be consumed was literally too much for me. I might have managed one cup of decidedly nasty tea, or what passes muster for such, but not four or five, which I found to be the minimum. I could stomach, or secretly dispose of in my pockets, a single slice of leaden cake or oleaginous bread-and-butter; but I could not do this with multitudinous slabs of either. I never went to more than one tea-meeting where I felt at home, and that was at the Soirée Suisse, which takes place annually in London, where pretty Helvetian damsels brew the most fragrant coffee and hand round delicious little cakes, arrayed as they are in their killing national costume and chattering in a dozen different patois. I had a notion that tea at Kensal New Town would be very much less eligible, so I stopped away. Perhaps I was prejudiced. The tea might have been different from what I expected. The experiences certainly were.

I got there about half-past seven, having allowed an interval of an hour and a half, which I thought would be sufficient for the most inveterate tea-drinker, even among the Kensal Town laundresses, should such happen to be present. I took the precaution, however, of bespeaking a lad of fifteen to accompany me, in case any of the fragments of the feast should yet have to be disposed of, since I knew his powers to equal those of the ostrich in stowing away eatables, especially in the lumpy cake line. Arrived at the hall, however, I found no symptoms of the tea save a steamy sort of smell and the rattle of the retreating cups and saucers. Whether "to my spirit's gain or loss," I had escaped the banquet and yet got in good time for the subsequent experiences.

A motherly-looking woman stood at the door, and gave me a cheery invitation to come in. She looked rather askance at my boy, but finding him properly convoyed by my sober self, she admitted him within the portal. A good many young gentlemen of a similar age were evidently excluded, and were regaling themselves with pagan sports outside. The hall was partially filled with respectable-looking mechanics, their wives, and families, there being more wives thanmechanics, and more families than either. Children abounded, especially babies in every stage of infantile development. Many were taking their maternal tea; and the boys and girls were got up in the most festive attire, the boys particularly shining with yellow soap. Most of the mammas wore perky hats, and many had follow-me-lads down the back, but all were exceedingly well-dressed and well-behaved, though evidently brimful of hilarity as well as cake and tea.

At the end of the hall was the inevitable platform, with chairs and a large cushion spread over the front rail for convenience of praying; since the "experiences" were to be interspersed with sacred song and prayer. Two gentlemen—I use the term advisedly—mounted the rostrum, one a long-bearded, middle-aged man, in a frock coat, who was the pastor, and another an aged minister, superannuated, as I afterwards discovered, and not altogether happy in his worldly lot. He was very old, grey-haired, and feeble, with a worn suit of clerical black, and a voluminous white tie. He sat humbly, almost despondingly, by the side of his younger brother in the ministry, while the latter delivered a merry little opening address, hoping all had made a good tea; if not, there was still about half a can left. Nobody wanted any more; so they had a hymn from the "Sacred Songster," a copy of which volume I purchased in the hall for twopence halfpenny. The tune was a martial one, well sung by a choir of men andwomen to the accompaniment of a harmonium, and bravely borne part in, you may depend upon it, by the whole assembly, I verily believe, except the babies, and one or two of these put in a note sometimes. The hymn was called, "Oh, we are Volunteers!" and was very Church-militant indeed, beginning thus:—

Oh, we are volunteers in the army of the Lord,Forming into line at our Captain's word;We are under marching orders to take the battle-field,And we'll ne'er give o'er the fight till the foe shall yield.

Then came the chorus, repeated after every verse:—

Come and join the army, the army of the Lord,Jesus is our Captain, we rally at His word:Sharp will be the conflict with the powers of sin,But with such a leader we are sure to win.

The poor old minister offered up a short prayer. The pastor read the 1st Corinthians, chapter 13, and explained briefly what charity meant there; adding that this gathering was very like one of the Agapæ of the early Christians—a remark I had not expected to hear in that assembly. Then there was another hymn, "Beautiful Land of Rest," when it did one good to hear the unction with which the second syllable of the refrain was given:—

Jerusalem, Jerusalem,Beautiful land of rest.

After this the "Experiences" commenced in real earnest. Brothers and Sisters were exhorted to lay aside shyness and mount the platform. Of course no one would do so at first; and the poor shaky old minister had to come to the rescue.

He told us, at rather too great length, the simple story of his life—how he was a farmer's son, and had several brothers "besides himself." He had to learn verses of the Bible for his father, which used to go against the grain, until at last, instead of being "a wicked boy," he took up religion on his own account. He began to be afraid that, if he died, he should go to "a bad place," and therefore started saying his prayers. His brother George used to push him over when he was praying half-dressed in the bedroom, or occasionally vary proceedings by stirring him up with a sweeping brush. At last he found out a quiet place under a haystack, and there retired to pray. The old man drew a perfect picture of the first prayer thus offered, and told us he could remember every little detail of the spot, and the great oak tree spreading its branches over it. "Here I am," he said, "a poor old pilgrim on the bright side of seventy now, and yet I can remember it all. I say the 'bright' side, for I know it is a bright home I am soon going to." Then he told us how God took his wife from him and all his worldly goods, and he was quite eloquent about the comfort his religion was to him now as he went to his little lonely lodging. He drew next too truthful a picture of the state of things he saw around him in Kensal New Town—mothers with infants in their arms crowding the tavern doors; and finished up with a story, of which he did not see the irrelevancy, about a fine lady going to the "theatre,"and saying how much she had enjoyed the anticipation, then the play itself, and, lastly, the thought of it afterwards. She was overheard by a faithful pastor, who told her she had omitted one detail. "No," she said, "I have told you all." "You have told us how you enjoyed the thoughts of the theatre, and the performance, and the recollection of it afterwards; but you have not told us how you will enjoy the thoughts of it on your death-bed." Of course the "fine lady" was converted on the spot, as they always are in tracts; and the good old fellow brought his long-winded narrative of experiences to an end by-and-by, the pastor having omitted to pull his coat-tails, as he promised to do if any speaker exceeded the allotted time. "The people were certainly very attentive to hear him," and one man next my boy expressed his satisfaction by letting off little groans, like minute guns, at frequent intervals.

Then another hymn was sung, "The Beautiful Land on High," which, by the way, is a favourite with the spiritualists at their "Face Séances." I half expected to see a ghostly-looking visage peep out of some corner cupboard, as I had often done with my spiritual friends—that being another experience which I cultivate with considerable interest and curiosity. The hymn being over, a black-bearded, but soft-voiced man, in a velveteen coat, got upon the platform, and told us how the chief delight of his life was at one time making dogs fight. When the animals were notsufficiently pugnacious of themselves, his habit was to construct an apparatus, consisting of a pin at the end of a stick, and so urge them to the combat, until it proved fatal to one of them. It was, he said, dreadful work; and he now considered it the direct machination of Satan. Another favourite pursuit was interrupting the proceedings of open-air missionaries. One day after he had done so, he went home with a companion who had taken a tract from one of the missionaries. He had a quarrel with his "missis." "Not that missis sittin' there," he said, alluding to a smart lady in front, "but my first missis." In order to show his sulks against his missis, he took to reading the tract, and it soon made him cry. Then he went to chapel and heard a sermon on Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt. He was a little exercised by this, and saw the minister in the vestry, but soon fell back into bad habits again, singing canaries for 10s.6d.a side. As he was taking his bird out one Sunday morning, the bottom of the cage came out, and the canary escaped. This he looked upon as "God's work," since it caused him to go to chapel that morning. His conversion soon followed, and he applied to that circumstance, in a very apposite manner, the Parable of the Prodigal, concluding with a stanza from the well-known hymn—

God moves in a mysterious wayHis wonders to perform.

Another moustached man followed. He was exceedingly well-dressed, though he told us he was only a common labourer. He had long given up his "'art" to God, but to little purpose until he came to this chapel. "But there," he said, "down in that corner under the gas-lamp, I prayed for the first time. I prayed that God would take away my stony 'art and give me a 'art of flesh, and renew a right sperrit within me." From that time he led a new life. His fellow-workmen began to sneer at the change, and said ironically they should take to going to chapel too. "I wish to God you would," was his reply. He described the personal influence of the pastor upon him, which strengthened the good resolutions he had formed, and enabled him to say, "I will not let Thee go."

I could not help thinking, as I listened to the simple, earnest words of the speaker, that here was an element the National Church is too apt to ignore. The Roman Catholic Church would seize hold upon that man, and put him in a working men's guild or confraternity. The Free Church found him work to do, and gave him a chief seat in the synagogue, and an opportunity of airing his "experiences" on a platform. Surely better either one or the other, than sotting his life at a public-house, or turning tap-room orator. He ended by crying shame upon himself for having put off the change until so late in life, and added a wish that all the labouring classes could see, as he had been brought to see, where their chief interest as well as happiness lay.

A tall man from the choir followed, and was considerably more self-possessed than the other two speakers. He told us at the outset that he had been "a Christian" for fourteen years. It was generally laid down as a rule, he said, that big men were good-tempered. He was not a small man; but until he gave his heart to God he was never good-tempered. He had, for thirty-two years, been brought up in the Church of England, but had found no conversion there. He had no wish to speak against the Church, but such was the case. He wandered about a good deal in those years, from Roman Catholic to Old Methodist chapels; but the latter settled him. He was attending a class meeting in Kensal New Town one night, and suddenly a determination came over him that he would not sleep that night until he had kneeled down and prayed with his wife, though it would be the first time he had done so for thirty-two years. When it came to bedtime his courage failed him. He could not get into bed; and he did not like to tell his wife why. "That," he said, "was the devil worritin' me." His wife said, "I know what's the matter with you. You want to pray. We will see what we can do." His wife, he told us, was "unconverted," but still she "throwed open the door" on that occasion. He never knew happiness, he said, until he came to Jesus; and he added, "Oh, I do love my Jesus." He often talked to his fellow-workmen about the state of their souls, and they askedhim how it was he was so certain of being converted (a question I fancy others than they would like to have solved), and he answered them, "I feel it. I was uncomfortable before; and now I am happy. I don't wonder so much at the old martyrs going boldly up to the stake, because I feel I could do anything rather than give up my Jesus."

Hereupon the pastor, anticipating the departure of some of the assembly—for the clock was pointing to ten—announced a Temperance Meeting for the following Monday, and also said he should like the congregation to get up these meetings entirely on their own account, without any "clerical" element at all, and to make the Tea Meeting a "Free and Easy" in the best sense of the word.

I went—shall I confess it?—to the experience meeting rather inclined to scoff, and I stopped, if not altogether to pray, at least to think very seriously of the value of the instrumentality thus brought to bear on such intractable material as the Kensal New Town population. The more cumbrous, even if more perfect or polished, machinery of the Established Church has notoriously failed for a long time to affect such raw material; and if it is beginning to succeed it is really by "taking a leaf out of the book" of such pastors as the one whose Tea-and-Experience Meeting I had attended. "Palmam qui meruit ferat."

Stiggins element, I must, in all justice, say there was none. The pastor was a simple but a refined andgentlemanly man; so was the poor broken old minister. There was no symptom of raving or rant; no vulgarity or bad taste. A gathering at a deanery or an episcopal palace could not have been more decorous, and I doubt if the hymns would have been sung as heartily. There was as little clerical starch as there was of the opposite element. Rubbing off the angles of character was one of the objects actually proposed by the pastor as the result of these gatherings; and I really felt as though a corner or two had gone out of my constitution. If a man is disposed to be priggish, or a lady exclusive, in religious matters, I would recommend the one or the other to avail themselves of the next opportunity to attend a Tea-and-Experience Meeting at Kensal New Town.

There is something very Arcadian and un-Cockney-like in the idea of linnet-singing in Lock's Fields. Imagination pictures so readily the green pastures and the wild bird's song, and Corydon with his pipe and his Phyllis, that it seems a pity to disabuse that exquisite faculty of our nature so far as to suggest that the linnets of which we speak are not wild, but tame and caged, and the fields very much less rural than those of Lincoln's Inn. This was the announcement that drew me to the New Kent Road on a recent Sunday morning to hear what poor Cockney Keats called the "tender-legged linnets:" "Bird-singing.—A match is made between Thomas Walker (the Bermondsey Champion) and William Hart (Champion of Walworth) to sing two linnets, on Sunday, for 2l.a side; birds to be on the nail precisely at two o'clock; the host to be referee. 10s.is now down; the remainder by nine this evening, at the Jolly Butchers, Rodney Road, Lock's Fields. Also a copper kettle will be sung for on the same day by six pairs of linnets; first pair up at half-past six o'clock in the evening. Any person requiring thesaid room for matches, &c., on making application to the host, will immediately be answered."

Rodney Road, be it known, is anything but a romantic thoroughfare, leading out of the New Kent Road, a little way from the Elephant and Castle; and the caravanserai bearing the title of the Jolly Butchers is an unpretending beershop, with no outward and visible signs of especial joviality. On entering I met mine host, rubicund and jolly enough, who politely pioneered me upstairs, when I reported myself as in quest of the linnets. The scene of contest I found to be a largish room, where some twenty or thirty most un-Arcadian looking gentlemen were already assembled, the only adjunct at all symptomatic of that pastoral district being their pipes, at which they were diligently puffing. The whole of the tender-legged competitors, both for the money and the copper kettle, were hanging in little square green cages over the fireplace; and the one idea uppermost in my mind was how well the linnets must be seasoned to tobacco smoke if they could sing at all in the atmosphere which those Corydons were so carefully polluting. Corydon, besides his pipe, had adopted nuts and beer to solace the tedium of the quarter of an hour that yet intervened before the Bermondsey bird and its Walworth antagonist were to be "on the nail;" and ever and anon fresh Corydons kept dropping in, until some fifty or sixty had assembled. They were all of one type. There was a"birdiness" discernible on the outer man of each; for birdiness, as well as horseyness, writes its mark on the countenance and the attire. In the latter department there was a proclivity to thick pea-jackets and voluminous white comforters round the neck, though the day was springlike and the room stuffy. The talk was loud, but not boisterous, and garnished with fewer elegant flowers of speech than one would have expected. Five minutes before two the non-competing birds were carefully muffled up in pocket-handkerchiefs, and carried in their cages out of earshot, lest their twitterings might inspire the competing minstrels. Bermondsey and Walworth alone occupied the nails. Scarcely any bets were made. They seemed an impecunious assemblage, gathered for mere sport. One gentleman did, indeed, offer to stake "that 'ere blowsy bob," as though a shilling in his possession were a rarity of which his friends must be certainly aware. What was the occult meaning of the epithet "Blowsy" I could not fathom, but there were no takers; and, after the windows had been opened for a few minutes to clear the atmosphere, they were closed again; the door locked; the two markers took their place at a table in front of the birds, with bits of chalk in their hands; mine host stood by as referee in case of disputes; time was called; and silence reigned supreme for a quarter of an hour, broken only by the vocal performances of the Bermondsey and Walworth champions respectively. If a hapless human being did so far forget himself as to cough or tread incontinently upon a nutshell, he was called to silence with curses not loud but deep.

The Walworth bird opened the concert with a brilliant solo by way of overture, which was duly reported by the musical critic in the shape of a chalk line on the table. The length of the effusion did not matter; a long aria, or a brilliant but spasmodic cadenza, each counted one, and one only. The Bermondsey bird, heedless of the issue at stake, devoted the precious moments to eating, emitting nothing beyond a dyspeptic twitter which didn't count; and his proprietor stood by me evidently chagrined, and perspiring profusely, either from anxiety or superfluous attire. Nearly half the time had gone by before Bermondsey put forth its powers. Meanwhile, Walworth made the most of the opportunity, singing in a manner of which I did not know linnets were capable. There were notes and passages in the répertoire of Walworth which were worthy of a canary. The bird no doubt felt that the credit of home art was at stake, and sang with a vigour calculated to throw foreign feathered artistes into the shade. Bermondsey evidently sang best after dinner, so he dined like an alderman; yet dined, alas! not wisely, but too well, or rather too long. Then he sang, first, a defiant roulade or so, as much as to say, "Can you beat that, Walworth?" pausing, with his head wickedly on one side, for areply. That reply was not wanting, for Walworth was flushed with success; and one could not help regretting ignorance of bird-language so as to gather exactly what the reply meant. Then came a protracted duet between the two birds, which was the pièce de résistance of the whole performance. The silence became irksome. I could not help congratulating myself on the fact that no Corydon had brought his Phyllis; for Phyllis, I am sure, would not have been able to stand it. Phyllis, I feel certain, would have giggled. We remained mute as mice, solemn as judges. The ghost of a twitter was hailed with mute signs of approval by the backers of each bird; but a glance at the expressive features of the host warned the markers that nothing must be chalked down that did not come up to his idea of singing. Had the destinies of empires hung upon his nod he could scarcely have looked more oracular. But Walworth could afford to take matters easily now. For the last five minutes the Bermondsey bird did most of the music; still it was a hopeless case. Success was not on the cards. By-and-by, time was again called. Babel recommenced, and the result stood as follows:

Walworth 3 score 18Bermondsey 1 score 10

It was an ignominious defeat truly; and, had one been disposed to moralize, it had not been difficult to draw a moral therefrom. It was not a case of "no song, no supper;" but of supper—or, rather, dinner—and no song. Bermondsey had failed in the artistic combat, not from lack of powers, as its brilliant part in the duet and its subsequent soli proved, but simply from a Sybaritic love for creature comforts. I ventured to suggest it might have been expedient to remove the seed, but was informed that, under those circumstances, the creature—its proprietor called it an uglier name—would not have sung at all. The remarkable part of the business to me was that they did sing at the proper time. They had not uttered anything beyond a twitter until silence was called, and from that moment one or the other was singing incessantly. I suppose it was the silence. I have noticed not only caged birds, but children—not to speak ungallantly of the fair sex—generally give tongue most freely when one is silent, and presumably wants to keep so.

The contest, however, was over, the stakes paid, and Corydon sought his pastoral pipe again—not without beer. It was a new experience, but not a very exciting one—to me, at least. It evidently had its attractions for the very large majority of attendants. In fact, Rodney Road is generally a "birdy" neighbourhood. Its staple products, to judge by the shops, seemed birds and beer. I was much pressed by mine host to stay for the evening entertainment, when six birds were to sing, and the attendance would be more numerous. As some five hours intervened I expressed regret at my inability to remain, reserving my opinionthat five hours in Lock's Fields might prove the reverse of attractive, and Corydon in greater force might not have an agreeable effect on that already stuffy chamber. So I took myself off, wondering much, by the way, what strange association of ideas could have led any imaginative man to propose such an incongruous reward as a copper kettle by way of præmium for linnet-singing.

There never was a time when, on all sorts of subjects, from Mesmerism to Woman's Rights, the ladies had so much to say for themselves. There is an ancient heresy which tells us that, on most occasions, ladies are prone to have the last word; but certain it is that they are making themselves heard now. On the special subject of her so-called "Rights" the abstract Woman was, I knew, prodigiously emphatic—how emphatic, though, I was not quite aware, until having seen from the top of a City-bound omnibus that a lady whom I will describe by the Aristophanic name of Praxagora would lecture at the Castle Street Co-operative Institute. I went and co-operated so far as to form one of that lady's audience. Her subject—the "Political Status of Women"—was evidently attractive, not only to what we used in our innocence to call the weaker sex, but also to those who are soon to have proved to them the fallacy of calling themselves the stronger. A goodly assemblage had gathered in the fine hall of the Co-operators to join in demolishing that ancient myth as to the superiority of the male sex. My first intention was to have reported verbatimor nearly so the oration of Praxagora on the subject; and if I changed my scheme it was not because that lady did not deserve to be reported. She said all that was to be said on the matter, and said it exceedingly well too; but when the lecture, which lasted fifty minutes, was over, I found it was to be succeeded by a debate; and I thought more might be gained by chronicling the collision of opinion thence ensuing than by simply quoting the words of any one speaker, however eloquent or exhaustive.

I own with fear and trembling—for it is a delicate, dangerous avowal—that, as a rule, I do not sympathize with the ladies who declaim on the subject of Woman's Rights. I do not mean to say I lack sympathy with the subject—I should like everybody to have their rights, and especially women—but they are sometimes asserted in such a sledge-hammer fashion, and the ladies who give them utterance are so prone to run large and be shrill-voiced that their very physique proves their claim either unnecessary or undesirable. I feel certain that in whatever station of domestic life those ladies may be placed, they would have their full rights, if not something more; and as for Parliamentary rights, I tremble for the unprotected males should such viragos ever compass the franchise; or, worse still, realize the ambition of the Ecclesiazusæ of Aristophanes, and sit on the benches of St. Stephen's clad in the nether garments of the hirsute sex. There was nothing of that kind onTuesday night. In manner and appearance our present Praxagora was thoroughly feminine, and, by her very quietude of manner, impressed me with a consciousness of power, and determination to use it. Her voice was soft and silvery almost as that of Miss Faithfull herself; and when, at the outset of her lecture, she claimed indulgence on the score of never having spoken in a public hall before, we had to press forward to the front benches to catch the modulated tones, and men who came clumping in with heavy boots in the course of the lecture were severely hushed down by stern-visaged females among the audience.

Disclaiming connexion with any society, Praxagora still adopted the first person plural in speaking of the doctrines and intentions of the down-trodden females. "We" felt so and so; "we" intended to do this or that; and certainly her cause gained by the element of mystery thus introduced, as well as by her own undoubted power of dealing with the subject. When the "we" is seen to refer to the brazen-voiced ladies aforesaid, and a few of the opposite sex who appear to have changed natures with the gentle ones they champion, that plural pronoun is the reverse of imposing, but the "we" of Praxagora introduced an element of awe, if only on the omne ignotum pro magnifico principle. In the most forcible way she went through the stock objections against giving women the franchise, and knocked them down one by one like so many ninepins. That coveted boon of a vote sheproved to be at the basis of all the regeneration of women. She claimed that woman should have her share in making the laws by which she was governed, and denied the popular assertion that in so doing she would quit her proper sphere. In fact, we all went with her up to a certain point, and most of the audience beyond that point. For myself I confess I felt disheartened when, having dealt in the most consummate way with other aspects of the subject, she came to the religious phase, and begging the question that the Bible and religion discountenanced woman's rights, commenced what sounded to me like a furious attack on each.

Now I happen to know—what perhaps those who look from another standpoint do not know—that this aggressive attitude assumed so unnecessarily by the advocates of woman's rights is calculated to keep back the cause more than anything else; and matter and manner had been so much the reverse of hostile up to the moment she plunged incontinently into the religious question, that it quite took me by surprise. I have known scores of people who, when they came under vigorous protest to hear Miss Emily Faithfull on the same fertile subject, went away converted because they found no iconoclasm of this kind in her teaching. They came to scoff and stopped, not indeed to pray, but to listen very attentively to a theme which has so much to be said in its favour that it is a pity to complicate its advocacy by the introduction of an extraneous and most difficult question. So it was, however; with pale, earnest face, and accents more incisive than before, Praxagora said if Bible and religion stood in the way of Woman's Rights, then Bible and religion must go. That was the gist of her remarks. I need not follow her in detail, because the supplementary matter sounded more bitterly still; and, had she not been reading from MS. I should have thought the lecturer was carried away by her subject; but no, she was reading quite calmly what were clearly enough her natural and deliberate opinions. I said I was surprised at the line she took. Perhaps I ought scarcely to have been so, for she was flanked on one side by Mr. Bradlaugh, on the other by Mr. Holyoake! but I never remember being so struck with a contrast as when at one moment Praxagora pictured the beauty of a well-regulated home, and the tender offices of woman towards the little children, and then shot off at a tangent to fierce invectives against the Bible and religion, which seemed so utterly uncalled for that no adversary who wanted to damage the cause could possibly have invented a more complete method of doing so.

The lecture over, the chairman invited discussion, and a fierce little working man immediately mounted the platform and took Praxagora to task for her injudicious onslaught. But, as usual, this gentleman was wildly irrelevant and carried away by his commendable zeal. Over and over again he had to be recalled to the question, until finally he set his whole audience against him, and had to sit down abruptly in the middle of a sort of apotheosis of Moses—as far as I could hear, for his zeal outran his eloquence as well as his discretion, and rendered him barely audible. A second speaker followed, and, though cordially sympathizing with the address, and tracing woman's incapacity to her state of subjugation, regretted that such a disturbing element as religion had been mixed up with a social claim. He considered that such a subject must inevitably prove an apple of discord. For this he was at once severely handled by Mr. Bradlaugh, who, consistently enough, defended the line Praxagora adopted towards the religious question, and justified the introduction of the subject from the charge of irrelevance. He also deprecated the surprise which the last speaker had expressed at the excellent address of Praxagora by pointing out that in America about one-third of the press were females, a fact which he attributed to the plan of Mixed Education. Then a new line was opened up by a speaker—it was as impossible to catch their names as to hear the stations announced by porters on the Underground Railway. He predicted that if women did get the franchise, Mr. Bradlaugh's "Temple" would be shut up in six months, as well as those of Messrs. Voysey and Conway and Dr. Perfitt. The ladies, he said, were swayed by Conventionalism and Priestcraft, and until you educated them, you could not safely give them the franchise.

A youthful Good Templar mounted the rostrum, for the purpose of patting Praxagora metaphorically on the back, and also ventilating his own opinions on the apathy of the working man in claiming his vote. Then somebody got up and denied that ladies were by nature theological. Their virtues were superior to those of men just as their voices were an octave higher. He was for having a Moral Department of the State presided over by ladies. Only one lady spoke; a jaunty young woman in a sailor's hat, who said that in religious persecutions men, not women, had been the persecutors; and then Praxagora rose to reply. She first of all explained her position with regard to the Bible, which she denied having unnecessarily attacked. The Bible forbade a woman to speak; and, that being so, the Bible must stand on one side, for "we" were going to speak. That the highest intellects had been formed on Bible models she denied by instancing Shelley. If she thought that this movement was going to destroy the womanhood of her sex she would not move a finger for its furtherance. She only thought it would give a higher style of womanhood. As to women requiring to be educated before they would know how to use the franchise, she pointed triumphantly to the Government which men had placed in power. It was significant, she said, that the first exercise of the working men's franchise had been to place a Conservative Government in office.

I daresay I am wrong, but the impression left on my mind by the discussion was that the liberty of thought and action claimed was the liberty of thinking as "we" think and doing what "we" want to have done—a process which has been before now mistaken for absolute freedom. Stripped of its aggressive adjuncts, Praxagora's advocacy of her main subject would be telling in the extreme from the fact of her blending such thorough womanliness of person, character, and sentiment with such vigorous championship of a doctrine against which I do not believe any prejudice exists. Drag in the religious difficulty, however, and you immediately array against it a host of prejudices, whether reasonable ones or the reverse is not now the question. I am only concerned with the unwisdom of having called them into existence. I own I thought that Christianity had been the means of raising woman from her state of Oriental degradation to the position she occupies in civilized countries. But I was only there to listen, not to speak; and I confess I came away in a divided frame of mind. I was pleased with the paper, but irritated to think that a lady, holding such excellent cards, should risk playing a losing game.

When Sydney Smith, from the depths of his barbarian ignorance, sought to rise to the conception of a Puseyite, he said in substance much as follows:—"I know not what these silly people want, except to revive every obsolete custom which the common sense of mankind has allowed to go to sleep." Puseyism is not to our present purpose; but Tichborne-ism is—for it has attained to the dignity of a veritable ism—and we may define it much after the same method, as an attempt, not, indeed, to revive the claims of, but to restore to society a person, who, after a trial of unexampled length, was consigned by the verdict of a jury, and the consequent sentence of the Lord Chief Justice, to the possibly uncongenial retirement of Millbank Penitentiary. With the rights or wrongs of such an event I have simply nothing to do. I abandoned the Tichborne Trial at an early stage in a condition of utter bewilderment; and directly an old gentleman sought to button-hole me, and argue that he must be the man, or he couldn't be the man, I made off, or changed the conversation as rapidly as I could.

But when the question had at length been resolved by wiser heads than mine, and when, too, I felt I could write calmly, with no fear of an action for contempt of court before my eyes, I confess that a poster announcing an open-air Tichborne meeting in Mr. Warren's cricket-field, Notting Hill, was too fascinating for me. I had heard of such gatherings in provincial places and East End halls; but this invasion of the West was breaking new ground. I would go; in fine I went. On the evening of an exceptionally hot July day, I felt there might be worse places than Mr. Warren's breezy cricket ground alongside Notting Barn Farm; so six o'clock, the hour when the chair was to be taken, found me at the spot—first of the outer world—and forestalled only by a solitary Tichbornite. How I knew that the gentleman in question deserved that appellation I say not; but I felt instinctively that such was the case. He had a shiny black frock-coat on, like a well-to-do artisan out for a holiday, and a roll of paper protruding from his pocket I rightly inferred to be a Tichborne petition for signature. As soon as we got on the ground, and I was enjoying the sensation of the crisp well rolled turf beneath my feet, a man hove in sight with a table, and this attracted a few observers. A gentleman in a light coat, too, who was serenely gazing over the hedge at the Kensington Park Cricket Club in the next ground, was, they informed me, Mr. Guildford Onslow. The presidinggenius of the place, however, was Mrs. Warren, who, arrayed in a gown of emerald green—as though she were attending a Fenian meeting—bustled about in a state of intense excitement until the greengrocer's cart, which was to serve as a rostrum, had arrived. When this occurred, the table and half a dozen Windsor chairs were hoisted into it; another table was arranged below the van, with the Tichborne Petition outspread upon it; and I fancied that arrangements were complete.

Not so, however. The gentleman in the shiny coat and emerald green Mrs. Warren between them tin-tacked up a long scroll or "legend" along the rim of the van, consisting of the text from Psalm xxxv. 11:—"False witnesses did rise up against me. They laid to my charge things that I knew not." The association of ideas was grotesque, I know, but really as Mrs. Warren and the shiny artisan were nailing this strip to the greengrocer's van, they put me very much in mind of a curate and a lady friend "doing decorations" at Christmas or Eastertide. Nor was this all. When the "strange device" was duly tin-tacked, some workmen brought four long pieces of quartering, and a second strip of white calico with letters stuck on it was nailed to these; and when the stalwart fellows hoisted it in air and tied the two centre pieces of wood to the wheels of the greengrocer's cart, I found that it consisted of the Ninth Commandment. The self-sacrificing carpenters were to hold—and didhold—the outside poles banner-wise during the entire evening; and, with one slight exception, this banner with the strange device, No. 2, formed an appropriate, if not altogether ornamental background for the greengrocer's van. Knots of people had gathered during these proceedings; and I was confused to find that I was being generally pointed out as Mr. Onslow, that gentleman having retired to the privacy of Mr. Warren's neighbouring abode. Later on I was taken for a detective, because, in my innocence, I withdrew ever and anon from the crowd, and, sitting on a verdurous bank, jotted down a note in my pocket-book; but this got me into such bad odour by-and-by that I felt it better to desist, and trust to memory. Some of the smaller boys also averred that I was Sir Roger himself, but their youthful opinions were too palpably erroneous to carry weight.

In due course the van was occupied by Mr. Onslow, the Rev. Mr. Buckingham (about whom I felt, of course, very curious), my shining artisan, and a few others. A thin-faced gentleman, whose name I could not catch, was voted to the chair, and announced to us that he should go on talking awhile in order that Messrs. Onslow and Buckingham might "refresh," as they had each come from the country. This they did coram publico in the cart, while the chairman kept us amused. The wind, too, was blowing pretty freshly, and was especially hard on the Ninth Commandment, which gave considerable trouble to the holders of theprops. It was directly in the teeth of the speaker, too—an arrangement which Mrs. Warren, in her zeal, had overlooked; and it was decided by common consent to "reverse the meeting"—that is, to turn the chairs of the speakers round, so that the Ninth Commandment was nowhere, and looked like an Egyptian hieroglyph, as the reversed letters showed dimly through the calico. The chairman eventually read to the meeting, which was now a tolerably full one, the form of petition which was to serve as the single resolution of the evening. I was struck with this gentleman's departure from conventional legal phraseology on this occasion. Instead of naming the cause célèbre "The QueenversusCastro" (it being written, as Sam Weller says, with a "wee") he termed it "The QueenviaCastro!" The petition was as follows:—

"That in the trial at Bar in the Court of Queen's Bench, on an indictment of the Queen v. Castro, alias Arthur Orton, alias Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne, Bart., for perjury, the jury, on the 28th day of February, 1874, brought in a verdict of guilty against him, declaring him to be Arthur Orton, and he was sentenced to fourteen years' penal servitude, which he is now undergoing.

"That your petitioners have reason to know and believe and are satisfied, both from the evidence produced at the trial and furnished since, and from their own personal knowledge that he is not Arthur Orton.

"That though 280 witnesses were examined at the said trial in his behalf, a very large number more, as your petitioners have been informed and believe, were also ready to be examined, but that funds were not available for the purpose, the defendant having been entirely dependent on the voluntary subscriptions of the public for his defence.

"That your petitioners submit that such a large number as 280 witnesses, most of whom gave positive evidence that the defendant was not Arthur Orton, and whose testimony in two instances only was questioned in a court of law—as against about 200 witnesses for the prosecution, whose evidence was chiefly of a negative character—was of itself enough to raise a doubt in the defendant's favour, of which doubt he ought to have had the benefit, in accordance both with the law and the custom of the country.

"That, under the circumstances, your petitioners submit that he had not a fair trial, and they pray your honourable House to take the matter into your serious consideration, with a view to memorialize her Majesty to grant a free pardon."

The Rev. Mr. Buckingham, a cheery gentleman who bore a remarkable resemblance to the celebrated Mr. Pickwick, rose to move the resolution; and I could not help noticing that, not content with the ordinary white tie of clerical life, he had "continued the idea downwards" in a white waistcoat, which rather altered the state of things. He spoke welland forcibly I should think for an hour, confining his remarks to the subject of "Sir Roger" not being Arthur Orton. He (Mr. Buckingham) belonged to some waterside mission at Wapping, and had known Arthur Orton familiarly from earliest boyhood. His two grievances were that his negative evidence had not been taken, and that he was now being continually waited on by "Jesuits," who temptingly held out cheques for 1000l.to him if he would only make affidavit that the man in Millbank was Arthur Orton.

Mr. Onslow, who seconded the resolution, however, made the speech of the evening, and was so enthusiastically received that he had to recommence several times after glowing perorations. The burden of Mr. Onslow's prophecy was the unfairness of the trial; and his "bogies" were detectives, just as Mr. Buckingham's were Jesuits. The Jean Luie affair was the most infernal "plant" in the whole case; and he read records of conflicting evidence which really were enough to make one pack up one's traps and resolve on instant emigration. He was, however, certainly right on one point. He said that such meetings were safety-valves which prevented revolution. No doubt this was a safety-valve. It amused the speakers, and Mrs. Warren and the glazed artisan; and it could do nobody any possible harm. Whether it was likely to do the man of Millbank any good was quite another matter, and one which, of course, it was quite besidemy purpose to discuss. There was a deal of—to me—very interesting speaking; for I gained new light about the case, and stood until my legs fairly ached listening to Messrs. Buckingham and Onslow.

When the editor of theTichborne Gazetteclaimed an innings it was another matter; and—perhaps with lack of esprit de corps—I decamped. I only saw this gentleman gesticulating as I left the field; but the rate at which he was getting up the steam promised a speech that would last till nightfall.

As I went off the ground I was struck with the clever way in which a London costermonger will turn anything and everything to account. One of them was going about with a truck of cherries, crying out, "Sir Roger Tichborne cherries. Penny a lot!"

There was no symptom of overt opposition, though opponents were blandly invited to mount the waggon and state their views; but there was a good deal of quiet chaff on the outskirts of the crowd, which is the portion I always select on such occasions for my observation. On the whole, however, the assembly was pretty unanimous; and though it never assumed the dimensions of a "monster meeting," the fact that even so many people could be got together for such a purpose seemed to me sufficiently a sign of the times to deserve annotation in passing.

I have often thought that an interesting series of articles might be written on the subject of "London out of Church," dealing with the manners and customs of those people who patronize no sort of religious establishment on the Sunday. I have seen pretty well all the typical phases of religious London and London irreligious; but these would rather be characterized as non-religious than as irreligious folks. They do not belong to any of the varied forms of faith; in fact faith is from their life a thing apart. It is in this negative way that they are interesting. Sunday is with them only a regularly recurring Bank Holiday. It would be interesting to know what they do with it. A special difficulty, however, exists for me in any such inquiry, resulting from the fact that, in my capacity of clerical casual, I am pretty generally engaged on the Sunday; and when I am not, my Day of Rest is too valuable to be devoted to any of the manifold forms of metropolitan Sabbath-breaking. I have a great idea that parsons ought to be frequently preached at; and so I generally go to some church or chapel whenout of harness myself; and if "hearing sermons" constitute the proper carrying out of the things promised and vowed on my behalf at baptism I must have undergone as complete a course of Christian discipline as any man in Christendom, for I have been preached at by everybody from Roman Catholics down to Walworth Jumpers and Plumstead Peculiars!

But impressed with anxiety to know about the doings of the non-Church-goers, I have for a long time cast sheep's eyes at the Sunday League, and more than once definitely promised to join one of their Sunday outings; but I am strongly of Tom Hood's opinion that—

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