ON THE LONDON ROAD. 253 



People who can pay for a daily paper are so far above 

 it; a daily paper is the mark of the man who is in 

 civilization. 



Take an old-fashioned shutter and balance it 

 on the axle of a pair of low wheels, and you have 

 the London camel in principle. To complete it add 

 shafts in front, and at the rear run a low free- 

 board, as a sailor would say, along the edge, that 

 the cargo may not be shaken off. All the skill of the 

 fashionable brougham-builders in Long Acre could 

 not contrive a vehicle which would meet the require- 

 ments of the case so well as this. On the desert 

 routes of Palestine a donkey becomes romantic; in 

 a costermonger's barrow he is only an ass ; the 

 donkey himself doesn't see the distinction. He draws 

 a good deal of human nature about in these barrows, 

 and perhaps finds it very much the same in Surrey 

 and Syria. For if any one thinks the familiar barrow 

 is merely a truck for the conveyance of cabbages and 

 carrots, and for the exposure of the same to the choice 

 of housewives in Bermondsey he is mistaken. Far 

 beyond that, it is the symbol, the solid expression, 

 of life itself to the owner, his family, and circle of 

 connections, more so than even the ship to the sailor, 

 as the sailor, no matter how he may love his ship, 

 longs for port, and the joys of the shore, but the 

 barrow folk are always at sea on land. Such care 

 has to be taken of the miserable pony or the shame- 

 faced jackass ; he has to be groomed, and fed, and 

 looked to in his shed, and this occupies three or four 

 of the family at least, lads and strapping young girls, 

 night and morning. Besides which, the circle of 



