WALK TO LONDON. 343 



CHAPTER LI. 



Rural Laborers near London Our Mother Tongue Cockneys Provin- 

 cialists On the Naturalization of Foreign Words Authorities Subur- 

 ban London London The Thames " Saint Paul's from Blackfriar's 

 Bridge." 



TTPON our asking directions, a gentleman who left the first- 

 ^ class carriage offered to be our guide for a little way. He 

 led us between fields in which men were hay-making. We spoke 

 of the " London lads" we had been riding with, and the gentle- 

 man agreed with us that, bad as they might appear, they were 

 less degraded than the mass of agricultural laborers. 



" We could not stop to rest here on the stile," said he, " but 

 that every single man in that field, in the course of five minutes, 

 would come to us to ask something for drink ; and the worst of 

 it is, it is not an excuse to obtain money by indirect begging for 

 the support of their families, but they would actually spend it 

 immediately at the public-house." 



We told him that we had never been in London, and after a 

 little conversation he said that he had been trying to discover 

 where we came from, as from our accent he should have thought 

 us Londoners. He had thought that he could always tell from 

 what part of England any stranger in London came, but he could 

 not detect any of the provincial accents or idioms in our language. 



