BALLAD SINGER. 125 





water side over the next stile, who, they feared, had been unfor- 

 tunate, 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 tall, thin woman, without hat or 

 cap on her head, sitting under the bank behind some bushes, a 

 little bundle in a handkerchief 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 laboring men and women making 

 purchases with their week's earnings, which, until lately, it has 

 been a universal custom in England to pay on Saturday night 

 We heard a ballad-monger singing with a 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 " free 

 trade" and "ruin" oft repeated, and were the worst kind of dog- 

 gerel. One (sung to " Oh, Susannah ! ") I recollect, as follows : 



" Oh, poor farmers, 



Don't wait and cry in rain, 

 But be off to Californy, 

 If you cannot drive the wain." 



He read also choice scraps from confessions of murderers; 

 parts of the prayer-book travestied so as to tell against free trade ; 

 and other such literature. In another place we found a crowd 



