to the Derby and Aldershot Heath on a field-
day in June, for you have every component part
of both. Enormous rolling clouds of dust, a
heterogeneous mass of carriages open and shut,
some regularly licensed, others improvised for the
occasion, and bearing a paper permit obtained
impromptu from Somerset House, and gummed on
to the panels; the drivers of the vehicles
shouting, shrieking, touting, beckoning, and
gesticulating with whips, carrying weak-minded and
hustling feeble-bodied persons into becoming
passengers; gipsies, beggars, imps, with the
bronze of the country on their faces, and the
assurance of London in their address, vending
cigar-lights, showing the way, turning
"cart-wheels," and being generally obstructive; volunteer
officers clanking a good deal, and volunteer
privates unbuttoning their tunics and showing
more shirt-front than is provided for in the
regulations; public-houses crammed and overflowing
into the road with drink-seeking wayfarers;
station porters giving up all idea of business,
and flitting from one knot of people to the
other, sipping here, sporting there, like butterflies
in velveteen. The inhabitants of Putney
evidently divided into two sections—the natives,
who gathered together in grinning masses, who
chuckled fat-headedly, and sniggered, and saw a
grand opportunity for shirking work, and passing
the entire day in vacant staring; and the
affiliated, acclimatised, or naturalised Putneians,
who are grubs in the City from nine till five,
and butterflies at Putney for the remaining
portion of their lives, and whose wives and daughters
looked upon the whole thing as "low," and
glared balefully at us from their plate-glass
windows. I managed to survive even their scowls,
and installed myself as one of a cheerful though
perspiring party of seven, in a carriage intended
to hold four (and looking in its check chintz
lining as though it had come out in its dressing-
gown), which, after five minutes' dalliance with
a knotted whip, a very flea-bitten grey horse
was persuaded to drag up the hill towards the
camp.

As we neared the spot, I was reminded of my
friend the omnibus-driver's observations anent
Greenwich Fair and shooting for nuts, for I am
bound to say that in the course of a long and
varied experience, I never saw anything so like
a fair as the Wimbledon camp, seen from the
outside. A wooden railing, shabby enough in
itself, and rendered more shabby by the torn
and ragged bills sticking to it, surrounds the
camp; from within float sounds of distant bands,
popping rifles, and cheering populace, while
immediately outside stands that selvage of nothing-
doing, lounging, thieving, drunken scum,
invariably to be found in the immediate vicinity
of all fairs. On first entering, the same idea
prevailed, for there were a few miserable little
booths, in front of which one expected to see
painted canvases of the giantess, the armadillo,
and the tiger that devoured the Indian on horseback.
But as I progressed up the ground, and
passed, wonderingly, through the long line of
tents, this notion vanished entirely, and instead
of being in a fair, I found myself in a very
village of canvas. An hour's stroll showed me
that this village was a town; the early Australian
gold-diggers had their canvas town, and
here we had ours, within a twenty minutes' run
from London. Canvas Town, by all means!
for in what town could you find more completeness,
or in what town would you require more
than is here to your hand? For in the course
of my survey, I have lighted upon a newspaper
office (Volunteer Service Gazette), a police-
station, a post-office, with the hours of the
arrival and despatch of mails duly placarded
outside, a telegraph office, with temporary wires
communicating with—everywhere, whence you
could send the name of the winner of the
Queen's Prize to your friend Ryot in the indigo
trade at Suez, or utterly depress Sneesh of
McMull, yachting off Malta, with the tidings
that the Scotch were beaten in the International
Match; many taverns and restaurants; many
gunsmiths, and shops (tents) for kindred matters;
a club, where four copies of the Times are to be
found, with other journals in proportion, and
from which issuing the sound of a grand piano
and a musical voice proved that a great step in
advance had been made in club matters, and
that lady members were admitted. Further on,
here and there, I found public boards whereon
printed matters affecting the commonweal
might be—and were—read; "Lost" and
"Found" (rare the latter) notices, shooting
scores for great prizes, and other documents,
very like the inscriptions on pounds and such-
like country-town institutions. I am not much
of a reckoner in such matters, but, from my
observation, I should imagine that Canvas Town
covers many acres: it is duly fenced off from
the outlying grounds, and it has streets and a
square regularly arranged. In what might be
called the market-place, at the back of what I
choose to consider the town-hall (which, to
vulgar minds, is the "Grand Stand"), I find the
public clock, a monster Bennett, and a little
further off, the public thermometer, which tells
you everything scientific which you cannot
possibly want to know, and which, while being,
I understand, excessively useful to the erudite,
is so exact and so complicated, that even my very
cursory inspection of it sends me away headachy
and discomfited.

The whole of this city, which teems with an
ever-busy running pushing shouting gun-carrying
band-playing red green grey and brown
population, is under canvas, save in a few
instances where canvas is supplemented by wood.
Far and away, right and left, stretch the long
lines of tents, looking somewhat ghostly even in
the bright afternoon sun, and suggesting a very
spectral appearance at night. The tents are of
two shapes, some like Brobdingnagian dishes of
blancmange, others like inverted monster peg-
tops, without the pegs. Strolling on, I come
upon a little oasis of painted brick, a small house
belonging to the miller, whose mill looks like a
Huge geni with arms outspread, protecting the
phantom village he has called into existence—a