172 



AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



mals in this park, and the loud, hankering sounds of 

 the bucks as they pursued or circled around the does, 

 was a new sound to my ears. The rabbits and pheas- 

 ants also were objects of the liveliest interest to me, 

 and I found that after all a good shot at them with the 

 eye, especially when I could credit myself with alertness 

 or stealthiness, was satisfaction enough. 



I thought it worthy of note that though these great 

 parks in and about London were so free and apparently 

 without any police regulations whatever, yet I never 

 saw prowling about them any of those vicious, ruffianly 

 looking characters that generally infest the neighbor- 

 hood of our great cities, especially of a Sunday. There 

 were troops of boys, but they were astonishingly quiet 

 and innoxious, very unlike American boys, white or 

 black, a band of whom making excursions into the 

 country are always a band of outlaws. Ruffianism 

 with us is no doubt much more brazen and pronounced, 

 not merely because the law is lax, but because such is 

 the genius of the people. 



