KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



103 



town, the casks of wine were floating about in 

 all directions ; and the fire engines were at work, 

 pumping out the water. Meantime, many of the 

 men were pumping the wine out of the bins after 

 their own fashion, neither waiting for glasses, nor 

 wishing to call for any. They contented them- 

 selves drinking " a la Vigne," and I could see by 

 their merry faces they had not chosen the worst 

 wine ! 



I do not approve this cruel act of dishonesty, 

 Mr. Editor; I merely say what I saw. Many 

 people were totally ruined in these sad forty 

 minutes ; and doubtless many thousands are now 

 alive, who remember the storm of August, 1846. 

 Only one human life was sacrificed ; but on the 

 occasion of a similar, though much less violent 

 catastrophe at Vevay, about ten days afterwards, 

 no fewer than seven individuals perished. 

 — Au revoir. Your affectionate friend, 



Tottenham, Feb. 20th, 1853. 



Fino. 



PICTURES OF LIFE. 



OUR DAILY WAYFARERS. 



Of all the vast class of human creatures 

 who are doomed to diurnal weariness — to know 

 the bitterness of " the labor that is done under 

 the sun," — there are none that I can more feel- 

 ingly sympathise with than the daily wayfarers ; 

 especially at this particular season of shortened 

 days, frequent storms, and intense cold. I do 

 not mean the wealthy, the lazy, and luxurious 

 viatores that, in carriage, or on steed, traverse 

 the king's highways, in great bodily comfort ; and, 

 after a few hours' career, alight in elegant homes 

 or well-garnished inns, and stretching themselves 

 at their ease, with every requisite of viand, wine, 

 and feather-bed at command, 



Think themselves great travellers, 

 Invincible and bold ; 



but I mean all those who, being of the poor, are 

 u never to cease from the land ;" and who, 

 whether we be seated at our tables, circling our 

 fires in social mirth, or quietly laid in our beds, 

 we may be sure are scattered in a thousand 

 places on our great roads — be it summer or win- 

 ter, day or night, as plodding, as full of trouble, 

 as weary, and as picturesque as ever. 



Poor honest souls ! their very misery, their age, 

 their poverty, their ruggedness, their stooping 

 figures, and ragged array, make pleasant pictures 

 to the eye ; and if not for their suffering humanity, 

 yet for the variety they give to our journeyings, 

 we ought to spare them a little sympathy. I 

 must confess, that when I have been shut up in 

 a great town for some months, and again issuing 

 into the country, behold the same figures, the 

 same groups, come streaming along our principal 

 roads, that we have encountered there through all 

 the days of our lives — and that Bewick has de- 

 picted in his living sketches, I have a most inter- 

 nal satisfaction in the inexhaustible vagabonds ! 



There is one class of them that I freely give 

 up although the rogues have a spice of romance 

 about them ; I mean the vagabonds par excellence 

 — those clever, able, and eloquent fellows, that 

 can lose a limb or even an eye at will ; sailors 



who never saw the sea ; decayed tradesmen who 

 never had a groat honestly acquired; men of 

 fictitious miseries, who are most at home on the 

 road or in the lodging-house, and who live upon 

 the pity of the simple ; for them I ask no 

 pity. 



Then there are those little, nomadic merchants, 

 that from every large town diverge in all direc- 

 tions, and penetrate to every village and lonely 

 house with their wares. There is the chair-bottom- 

 er, with his great sheaf of rushes on his back, 

 who, seated on the sunny side of the farm-door, 

 or under the shade of a tree, as the season may 

 require, enriches the good people with news worth 

 more than his work. There is the wandering 

 milliner, an old woman of the true picturesque 

 school — short, broad, plentiful in her own attire of 

 coat, apron, and petticoats, with her strong staff 

 in her hand, her spacious, weather-beaten face, 

 and a great cage-like basket of open wicker-work 

 on her back, large enough to hold herself : — and 

 beside these, sundry bearers of shallow baskets of 

 tapes, braces, laces, pins, cotton-balls, and so 

 forth. These, and occasionally the Highland 

 drovers, with their plaids and dogs, and flocks and 

 herds, bringing with them the wildness of their 

 native moors, are all very well in their way — they 

 look well ; but they are the casual wayfarers, 

 about whom gathers the deepest interest. 



Of all the melancholy spectacles which every- 

 day life presents, what is more melancholy than 

 the marching of a troop of recruits out of the 

 town where they have been raised ? You hear a 

 single drum beat, a single fife play ; you see a 

 crowd collected, and another minute discovers 

 to you some twenty or thirty boys and men of the 

 lowest class, in their common clothes ; with ribands 

 in their hats, and bundles in their hands, awk- 

 wardly commencing that march which leads to 

 destruction. They have screwed up their resolu- 

 tions to the point of the necessary calmness of 

 aspect ; they have bid good-by to their friends, 

 with w horn they are ambitious of leaving the re- 

 putation of having gone off stoutly ; some of their 

 sweethearts, with red eyes, are hovering about ; 

 many of their comrades are going on a little with 

 them, and, perhaps, some fond and heart-broken 

 mother still clings tenaciously, but dejectedly, to 

 the side of her son, who has cost her nothing but 

 sorrow since he could run from her door. They 

 proceed a mile or two ; the fife and drum fall 

 back ; the last shaking of hands and shedding of 

 tears arrives, and they are led away to their dis- 

 tant station. The scene is sad enough ; but if 

 we look forward, what is the prospect ? Loose 

 lives at home, hard marches and fare abroad ; 

 death in some pestilent Indian swamp, or in the 

 regular wholesale carnage of battle. 



Yet, probably, some of these self-same youths 

 shall tread the highways of England in various 

 characters and stages of their career. One shall 

 come upon you as the deserter. There he marches 

 sullenly along, between two files of his fellow-sol- 

 diers with shouldered muskets ; instant death his 

 fate if he attempt to escape ; disgrace, corporal 

 punishment, death itself, perhaps, equally certain, 

 if he do not. He has found a soldier's life a 

 weary one. He has cast away his oath and his 

 service, and sought, in manifold disguises, and in 

 many a strange lurking-place, concealment from 



