Then there
was an absurd game of throwing a stick at crockery-ware, which I have
witnessed a hundred times, and personally engaged in once or twice,
without ever having the satisfaction to see a bit of broken crockery.
In other spots, you found donkeys for children to ride, and ponies of a
very meek and patient spirit, on which the Cockney pleasure-seekers of
both sexes rode races and made wonderful displays of horsemanship. By
way of refreshment there was gingerbread, (but, as a true patriot,
I must pronounce it greatly inferior to our native dainty,) and
ginger-beer, and probably stancher liquor among the booth-keeper's
hidden stores. The frequent railway-trains, as well as the numerous
steamers to Greenwich, have made the vacant portions of Blackheath a
play-ground and breathing-place for the Londoners, readily and very
cheaply accessible; so that, in view of this broader use and enjoyment,
I a little grudged the tracts that have been filched away, so to speak,
and individualized by thriving citizens. One sort of visitors especially
interested me: they were schools of little boys or girls, under the
guardianship of their instructors,--charity-schools, as I often surmised
from their aspect, collected among dark alleys and squalid courts; and
hither they were brought to spend a summer afternoon, these pale little
progeny of the sunless nooks of London, who had never known that the sky
was any broader than that narrow and vapory strip above their native
lane.
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