AN DOVER 133 



and no one objects to tlie blocking of the footpath. A 

 chance cyclist manteuvres in the empty void of the 

 road in the midst of the square, and collides with no 

 one, for the simple reason that there is nobody to 

 collide with, and one acquaintance talks to another 

 across the wide space and is distinctly heard. Formal 

 but not unpleasing houses front on to this square, 

 together with the usual Town Hall, and a great 

 modern, highly uninteresting Gothic church, erected 

 after the model of Salisbury Cathedral, on the site of 

 the old building. 



For fifty-one weeks of the fifty -two that comprise 

 the year, this is the weekly six-days aspect of the 

 place, varied occasionally by the advent of a travelling 

 circus, or the arrival of a route-marching detachment 

 of the Royal Artillery, who park their guns in the 

 square, and may be seen in the stable-yards of the 

 inns on which they are billeted, in various stages of 

 dishevelment, in shirt-sleeves rolled up to elbows, and 

 braces dano-lins^ at waists, litterino- dow^n their horses, 

 or smoking very short and very foul pipes. 



All this idyllic quiet is blown to the winds during 

 the week of Weyhill Fair, the October pandemonium 

 held three and a half miles away. Then hordes of 

 cattle- and horse-jobbers, hop growers and buyers, 

 cheese-factors, and the travellers of firms dealing in 

 machinery, seeds, oil -cake, tarpaulins, and half a 

 hundred other everyday agricultural requisites, de- 

 scend upon the town. Then are dragged out from 

 mysterious receptacles the most antiquated of ' flys,' 

 and waggonettes, and nondescript vehicles, to lie 

 pressed into the service of conveying visitors to the 



