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"I'd like 'em to see the woods around here, that the city owns, and the springs, and the donkey-carts, and the theatre, and everything, and give 'em some practical ideas." Burnamy made an uneasy movement. "I'd 'a' liked to put 'em alongside of some of our improvements, and show how a town can be carried on when it's managed on business principles." "Why didn't you think of it?"
Every kind of dingy trap went by, sometimes drawn by two, sometimes by only one horse shays half a century old jingled along; there were even donkey-carts. Esther and Sarah were astonished at the number of costers, but old John told them that that was nothing to what it was fifty years ago. The year that Andover won the block began seven or eight miles from Epsom.
Beyond the spiked iron fence that enhedges the incurving drive, the roar of traffic, human, wheel and hoof, rose high for all the lateness of the hour: sidewalks groaning with the restless contact of hundreds of ill-shod feet; the roadway thundering hansoms, four-wheelers, motor-cars, dwarfed coster-mongers' donkey-carts and ponderous, rumbling, C.-P. motor-vans, struggling for place and progress.
Yet one or two of the streets are brisk and lively, and, being well thronged, have a holiday aspect. There are no carriages in town save donkey-carts; some of which are drawn by three donkeys abreast, and are large enough to hold a whole family. These conveyances will take you far out on the sands through wet and dry.
Tourists go by small boats floated on the current down the Wye, and the boats are hauled back on donkey-carts, little trains of them being seen creeping along the Monmouth road. From Ross to Monmouth the river flows through a region of rolling hills, with abrupt declivities where the rapid stream has scarped the margin into cliffs and ridges.
There was no train in those days, and the whole road between London and Epsom was choked with vehicles of all kinds, from four-in-hands to donkey-carts and wheelbarrows. My friends and I mingled freely in the crowds, and saw all the "humours" of the occasion.
Demanding Haytian bank-notes for a few hundred dollars on a letter of credit, the tourist, after a time of waiting, sees the street on which the banker lives completely blocked with donkey-carts, drays, mules, horses with panniers and carts drawn by bullocks.
So they drove on, meeting four-in-hands, and tandems, and donkey-carts, and a goat-cart, and basket-wagons driven by pretty girls, with uncomfortable youths in or out of livery behind. They met, had they but known it, many who were aiming at notoriety, and some who had it; many who looked contented with their lot, and some who actually were so.
In the middle of the crowd of vehicles, with an omnibus before them, and a brewer's dray behind them, came a line of three donkey-carts, heaped high with bundles and articles of gipsy-gear. The foremost was conducted by a middle-aged woman of tall, commanding aspect, and expression both cunning and fierce.
There was no train in those days, and the whole road between London and Epsom was choked with vehicles of all kinds, from four-in-hands to donkey-carts and wheelbarrows. My friends and I mingled freely in the crowds, and saw all the "humours" of the occasion.