THE DISINTEGRATION OF A PROCESSION 



of police and ropes, those of us who were in 

 attendance upon the Prince hoped for the best 

 as we viewed the crowd ahead of us. The Prince, 

 with his suite, was escorted by the president 

 (Lord Ilchester) and a bevy of vice-presidents 

 and officials. All went fairly well, with just 

 enough room to get through the mass of people, 

 till we reached the slope, when, to my horror, 

 I saw the front rank of spectators, yielding to 

 the pressure of those behind, gradually giving 

 way as we approached. As the little procession 

 advanced the interest and enthusiasm became 

 intensified, and the desire of everybody to have 

 as near a view of Royalty as possible overcame 

 every other consideration. Easy indeed was the 

 descent when once the hindmost on the embank- 

 ment had supplied the impetus, and all at once 

 it was seen that a boisterous, good-tempered 

 crowd, without any power to stay its own force, 

 had overwhelmed police and ropes, and were 

 surging around us. The little procession was 

 soon resolved into its component parts, and those 

 constituting it, with one exception, were struggling 

 for all they were worth to keep their legs and to 

 save their frock coats and top hats from annihila- 

 tion. 



Any efforts on our part to maintain a passage 

 would have been as futile as Mrs. Partington's 

 endeavours to stem the tide with her mop, so we 

 could only resign ourselves to our fate, and, 

 tossed about like rudderless ships in a storm, go 

 whither the winds and waves, otherwise the 

 populace, elected to take us. To add to our 

 physical inconvenience there was the appalling 



209 p 



