164 THE DOVER ROAD 



hop- vine is a delicate plant that requires as much 

 cossetting and constant attention as an invalid, and 

 if it is not carefully tended and trained up in the way it 

 should go, it presently droops and dies or becomes too 

 weak to climb up the long twelve- and fifteen-feet poles 

 which it is expected to surmount. And so it is jealously 

 shielded from all draughts and boisterous breezes by 

 long pieces of canvas or string netting, stretched from 

 })ole to pole at that side of the gardens whence come the 

 prevailing winds ; while every hop-pole is tied so 

 scrupulously and elaborately to its fellow that a June 

 hop-garden is a very maze of string. 



To these gardens come in August and September 

 hundreds of men, women, and children from London 

 slums ; some by train, many more by road. Whole 

 families of them, with their clothing, their pots and 

 l^ans and sooty kettles, slung over their shoulders, 

 come tramping down the weary miles, and fill the air 

 with ribaldry, strange oaths, and horrible blasphemy. 

 The villagers keep them at arm's length, if not, indeed, 

 at a greater distance than that, and keep their children 

 at home ; going round their gardens and orchards at 

 night, to see that gates are locked ; and, bolting doors 

 and latching windows securel}^, go to bed and dream 

 dreams in which evil-looking hoppers are stealing their 

 fruit and making away with the occupants of their 

 hen-roosts. Sometimes they wake up and find the 

 crashing of branches, the screaming and clucking of 

 cocks and hens, which have formed the subjects of their 

 dreams, to have foundation in fact, and hurriedly 

 dashing out of bed, arrive, barefooted and armed only 

 with a poker, in their gardens just in time to see 

 mysterious figures vanish over the wall and to hear the 

 protests of their stolen fowls grow small by degrees and 

 beautifully less in the distance. Next day the bereaved 

 villager is heard to execute fruitless variations of 

 " Tell me, shepherv^'s, have you seen my Flora pass 

 this way ? " and some enterprising emigrants from 

 Whitechapel feast royally on poultry. 



