74 A KENTISH PARISH 



possible. They make their fire in the open, and boil 

 the kettle on the sticks they had gathered in the lanes 

 or dragged from the hedgerows and a cheery family 

 they seem as they gather round the common platter. 

 Their clothes may be ragged enough, and the hair of 

 the mother and her daughters is wofully unkempt ; but 

 it is pleasant to see the thin faces of the children filling 

 up and bronzing with their country outing. Indeed we 

 believe that, on the whole, these wandering hop-pickers 

 are a greatly maligned race. Last season, for example, 

 owing to miscalculations as to the opening time, the 

 South-Eastern Railway Company ran its Sunday hop- 

 ping-train a week too soon. For a whole week a body 

 of impecunious vagabonds and adventurers were loung- 

 ing about the streets of Maidstone, which is of course 

 one of the great capitals of the hop-districts. Yet there 

 were few complaints of their behaviour, and fewer 

 charges before the magistrates. 



We said that aesthetic amateurs of nature might place 

 the charts before the hop-gardens, but on second 

 thoughts we are by no means sure of that. For there 

 is no more graceful climber than the hop ; though the 

 exuberant suckers may be nipped from the roots, other- 

 wise it is suffered to grow in untrained luxuriance ; and 

 then in admiring it you have the arriere pensfo that it is 

 not only ornamental but eminently useful. The very 

 scent of the hop is suggestive of mighty home-brewed, 

 and the invigorating pale ales of our skilled pro- 

 fessionals. The hop is a genuinely English plant, and it 

 is hard to say how much of our national glory and 



