WALK TO LONDON. 173 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



RURAL LABOURERS NEAR LONDON. OUR MOTHER TONGUE. COCKNEYS. 1 RO- 



VINCIALISTS. ON THE NATURALIZATION OF FOREIGN WORDS. AUTHOR 

 ITIES. SUBURBAN LONDON. LONDON. THE THAMES. &quot; SAINT PAUL S 



FROM BLACKFRIAR S BRIDGE.&quot; 



UPON our asking directions, a gentleman who left the first- 

 class carriage offered to be our guide for ^ little way. 

 He led us between fields in which some men were hay 

 making. We spoke of the &quot; London lads&quot; we had been riding 

 with, and the gentleman agreed with us that, wicked as they 

 might appear, they were less degraded than the mass of 

 agricultural labourers. 



&quot;We could not stop to rest here on the stile,&quot; said he, 

 &quot; but that every single man in that field, in the course of five 

 minutes , would come to us to ask something for drink ; and 

 the worst of it is, it is not an excuse to obtain money by 

 indirect begging for the support of their families, but they 

 would actually spend it immediately at the public-house.&quot; 



We told him we had never been in London, and after a 

 little conversation he said that he had been trying to discover 

 where we came from, as from our accent he should have 

 thought us Londoners. He had thought that he could always 

 tell from what part of England any stranger in London came, 

 but he could not detect any of thd provincial accents or 

 idioms in our language. We told him that we had supposed 

 the cockney dialect was quite distinct, but certainly never 



