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Updated: June 20, 2025
I galloped after him, more with the intention of frightening than hurting him, and was just on the point of turning back and following the fugitives, when something dropped over my head, my arms were pinioned to my side, and I was dragged from my saddle. The foot-people had lassoed me. I was as helpless as a man in a strait waistcoat.
"Agreed," I replied; and just then a turn in the lane brought us into full view of the meet of her Majesty's stag-hounds. What a motley assemblage it was! At first I could not catch a glimpse of the hounds themselves, or even the servants, for the crowd, mostly of foot-people, that surrounded them. Where did these queer-looking pedestrians come from?
Mild equestrians, much at the mercy of their infuriated steeds; hot foot-people, springing out of the way of the charging squadrons, and revenging themselves for threatened annihilation by sarcastic jeers, not altogether undeserved.
"No, nor likely to be." The horse-people soon began to move off again "Thank you, Mr. Dale. Good night, Mr. Dale.... You've done us proper, sir.... Just what I wanted.... Good night, ma'am;" but the foot-people lingered. The red-coated earth-digger, Veale, and one or two others, had got around Mr. Allen and were chaffing him irreverently.
Carts and carriages, horse-people and foot-people, were flocking to the fair; unsold cows and horses, with their weary drivers, and labouring men who, having made a night as well as a day of it, began to think it time to find their way home, were coming from it; Punch was being exhibited at one end of the street, a barrel-organ, surmounted by a most accomplished monkey, was playing at the other; a half tipsy horse-dealer was galloping up and down the road, showing off an unbroken forest pony, who threatened every moment to throw him and break his neck; a hawker was walking up the street crying Greenacre's last dying speech, who was hanged that morning at Newgate, and as all the world knows, made none; and the highway in front of our house was well nigh blocked up by three or four carriages waiting for different sets of visiters, and by a gang of gipsies who stood clustered round the gate, waiting with great anxiety the issue of an investigation going on in the hall, where one of their gang was under examination upon a question of stealing a goose.
Mules and donkeys walk along the gutter, while foot-people flatten themselves against the walls. A well-laden mule fairly absorbs the width of the little streets. The condition of these wretched transport animals is not due so much to wanton cruelty as to neglect, and to a callousness bred of long familiarity.
When they were mounted, I am obliged to confess that those magnificent animals made Brilliant himself look small. By this time there was great excitement amongst the foot-people; and an official in gold lace, a sort of mounted beadle, riding up with a heavy-thonged whip, cleared a lane at the back of the cart which I had so erroneously imagined to contain the Prince Consort.
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