The Open Air 



bear upon their wheels the fortunes of whole families 

 and of their hangers-on. Sometimes there is a load 

 of pathos, of which the race of the ass has carried 

 a good deal in all ages. More often it is a heavy 

 lump of dull, evil, and exceedingly stupid cunning. 

 The wild evil of the Spanish contrabandistas seems 

 atoned by that wildness; but this dull wickedness 

 has no flush of colour, no poppy on its dirt heaps. 



Over one barrow the sailors had fixed up a tent 

 canvas stretched from corner poles, two fellows sat 

 almost on the shafts outside; they were well. Under 

 the canvas there lay a young fellow white and 

 emaciated, whose face was drawn down with severe 

 suffering of some kind, and his dark eyes, enlarged 

 and accentuated, looked as if touched with bella- 

 donna. The family council at home in the close and 

 fetid court had resolved themselves into a medical 

 board and ordered him to the sunny Riviera. The 

 ship having been fitted up for the invalid, away they 

 sailed for the south, out from the ends of the earth 

 of London into the ocean of green fields and trees, 

 thence past many an island village, and so to the 

 shores where the Kentish hops were yellowing fast 

 for the pickers. There, in the vintage days, doubt- 

 less he found solace, and possibly recovery. To catch 

 a glimpse of that dark and cavernous eye under the 

 shade of the travelling tent reminded me of the eyes 

 of the wounded in the ambulance-waggons that came 

 pouring into Brussels after Sedan. In the dusk of 

 the lovely September evenings it was a beautiful 

 September, the lime-leaves were just tinted with 

 orange the waggons came in a long string, the 

 wounded and maimed lying in them, packed carefully, 

 and rolled round, as it were, with wadding to save 

 them from the jolts of the ruts and stones. It is 



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