254 THE OPEN AIR. 



connections look in to see how he is going on, and 

 to hear the story of the day's adventures, and what 

 is proposed for to-morrow. Perhaps one is invited 

 to join the next excursion, and thinks as much of it 

 as others might do of an invitation for a cruise in 

 the Mediterranean. Any one who watches the suc- 

 cession of barrows driving along through the village 

 out into the fields of Kent can easily, see how they 

 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 ; bat 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 belladonna. 

 The family council at home in the close and fetid 

 court had resolved themselves into a medical board 

 and ordered him to the sunny Eiviera. 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, doubtless 



