146 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



seemed walking for pleasure. There were pleasure-boats, 

 too, with parties of. ladies under awnings, rowing up and 

 down the river, sometimes with music. 



We were stopped. by some labouring people going home, 

 who asked us to look after a poor woman we should see sit 

 ting by the water side over the next stile, who, they feared, 

 had been unfortunate, and was going to drown herself. She 

 had been there for an hour, and they had been for some time 

 trying to prevail on her to get up and go home, but she would 

 not reply to them. We found her as they had said a very 

 tall, thin woman, without hat or cap on her head, sitting un 

 der the bank behind some bushes, a little bundle in a hand 

 kerchief on her knees, her head thrown forward, resting upon 

 it, her hands clasped over her forehead, and looking moodily 

 into the dark stream. We drew back and sat on the stile, 

 where we could see if she stepped into the water. In a few 

 minutes she arose, and avoiding to turn her face towards us, 

 walked rapidly towards the town. We followed her until she 

 was lost in a crowd near the gate. 



We found the streets within the walls all flaring with gas 

 light, and crowded with hawkers and hucksters with donkey- 

 carts, soldiers, and policemen, and labouring men and women 

 making purchases with their week s earnings, which it is a 

 universal custom in England to have paid on Saturday night. 

 We heard a ballad-monger singing with a long, drawling, 

 nasal tone, on a high key, and listened for awhile to see what 

 he had. One after another he would hold them up by a gas 

 light, and sing them. The greater number were protection 

 songs, with &quot;free trade&quot; and &quot; ruin&quot; oft repeated, and were the 

 worst kind of doggerel. One (sung to &quot; Oh, Susannah !&quot;) I 

 recollect as follows : 



