A TRAMP TO THE "DERBY."

IT had struck eight, and daylight was waning, when I, not altogether an inexperienced tramp, buttoned my rough coat of long service, and pulling my cap well over my ears-for the night was chilly-lit my pipe, and struck into the road. There was no lack of company-Epsom bound. There came along the road, with their faces Epsomward, men in twos and threes, with bulky bundles enveloped in coloured pocket handkerchiefs, out of holes in which protruded tiny legs and arms; but they might trudge on for me.

It was all very fine their hopeful way of stepping out, and their cheerful talk, and the prodigal way in which they puffed at clean short pipes, filled and lit at the public-house where a few minutes since they had halted to have just one last half pint a-piece, before they settled down to their night's tramp; it was all very well at present, but it wouldn't last. They were "little doll men; poor deluded wretches, three of thrice as many hundred who, quite new to the Epsom game, had "heard" that little dolls were the best "spec" out. They were to be bought at Houndsditch at the rate of twopence a dozen, and had been known to realise as much as a shilling for six, from merry gents in drags and open barouches, who wore them with their indecent legs stuck all round their white hats or in the button-holes of their coats. Why, at that rate, eighteen-penn'orth of stock might be the means of putting eight or ten shillings in their pockets even after they had paid the eighteenpence railway fare for riding home. Truly, it "might" be the means; but assuredly it will not be. You will find out your mistake, men of the indecent dolls, before you reach Wimbledon Common. You will be dismayed to overtake and be overtaken by troops of deluded ones, who each carry a bird'seye bundle, and each believe that he is one of the sagacious few who are alive to the "doll trick." Dismallest of mistakes! By this time to-morrow tiny dolls will be as dead

a drug in the market as the beaten favourite, and scores of disappointed would-be vendors may be found in Epsom town willing to sell you as many little dolls for the price of a few mouthfuls of bread as there are sticks of firewood in a halfpenny bundle, and who will not be able to effect one single sale, even at that rate. Then they will fag back to London about Thursday noon, hungry and footsore, still hugging the detested and undiminished bundle, out of the holes in which the little dolls kick their impudent heels as though in mockery and derision.

Here, next in the march, is a troop of ragged, shoeless, bootcleaning boys, balancing their black-box and brushes on their heads. Then a truck-load of ginger beer, hauled along by two sweating fellows, one pushing and one pulling, and both panting with fatigue and heat, although there is yet at least fifteen miles of hilly road before them. Here comes a barrow loaded with pieces of fried fish, two hundred-weight or so, covered over with a tarpaulin, and after being dragged through the dust all night, it will be vended on the Downs to-morrow under the blazing sun.

Following the fried-fish barrow are two organ-men; two of the detested race of grinders, straight from Saffron Hill, with their instruments of torture burdening their broad backs, and Epsom-bound by token of their trousers being turned up at the boots, to secure the cherished corduroy against chafing in the dust, and by their organs being temporarily divested of their handles. What on earth have put it into the heads of these two benighted Italians that they will be welcome, or even tolerated, on Epsom Downs to-morrow; or that they will have a chance of picking up money enough to compensate them for all their toil and tramping? But one of the inexplicable peculiarities of the organ-grinding animal is, that he is altogether unconscious that he is a nuisance. He believes in his music, and regards it as a pleasure as well as a business, and I have no doubt carries it home and grinds operatic and music-hall melodies to solace his family on days when he has had bad luck and there is no supper. I have a right to assume this to be the case, for once when I attended a select concert and ball held in the aristocratic region of Back Hill, near Liquorpond Street, and to which no one but grinders

and their particular friends were admitted, to my great astonishment the musicians of the evening were two organmen, perched on a tub, in a corner of the room, who, skipping the inappropriate tunes, ground out waltzes and jigs to the hearts' content of all assembled.

Four children-three girls and a boy-with a few dozen boxes of fusees tucked under their rags, run alongside five brutes in human form, with broken noses and puffy eyes, one of whom carries a bag, in which are the tools of their craftthe boxing-gloves with which, between the races, they will demonstrate the noble art of self-defence.

Here comes a man bearing a pail, along with two others, who apparently carry nothing at all, and yet that they are Epsom bound is evident from the fact that one has an old woollen comforter round his throat as a precaution against night air, while the other has the sole of his boot tied to the upper leather with a bit of string, and both have walking-sticks. What on earth can three men be going to do at Epsom with only one pail between them? Clearly it is time, too, I was on the tramp. Travellers on the road soon make What was my lay? It was the man that had tied his boot up with string who asked this, and thereby gave me an opportunity of establishing a chumship.

acquaintance.

"What's my lay? I'll bet you a pot of beer you don't guess it in three times."

"Done," said the man with the crippled blucher; "you're a 'pus palmer."" It was my design to plead guilty to the first 66 lay" I was accused of, but, as I had not the least notion what a "pus palmer" might be, and I should surely lay myself open to ignominious detection as an impostor if I was pressed on the subject, I declined the mysterious impeachment.

"Then you're a bettin'-list cove; holds the humberreller, or something in that line.”

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There was less danger here. I knew what a betting-list was, and any cove" might hold an umbrella; so I was fain to admit that I had lost, and at the very next public-house we came to we drank luck to each other over a pot of beer -nay, two pots-and, replenishing our pipes, took to the road again.

To my disappointment, however, I presently found that the mystery of the pail was a very shallow one. Indeed, it was no mystery at all; it was simply a delusion. The victim of the washhouse utensil-in which, by the bye, were bestowed some slices of bread and butter, wrapped in a clean cloth, furnished him, as he confided to me, by his old woman to help him on the road-had been told or had read of splendid strokes of business done by enterprising individuals possessed of a pail on Derby-day at Epsom.

"They'd give anything for a pail of water for their horses sometimes," said he; "it's more precious than champagne up in that dry part when the sun's blazing down. I've heard tell of as much as a guinea being give for a pail of water for horses by gents wot's won and are flush of money; half-a-crown for a pailful of water is quite common."

And

he hitched up the vessel at his back with a wink of confidence; and I feel sure that if anyone there and then had offered him a contract to supply water all day to-morrow on Epsom Downs at the rate of eighteenpence a pailful he would have indignantly spurned the idea.

There was no chance, however, of his obtaining such a bid from either of his present companions-assuredly not from the one on my right, an old man who walked with a limp, and whose hands were knarled and knotted and of the colour of cobbler's wax, and who wore about his throat the old woollen comforter before-mentioned. When the pailbearer talked so bravely, the old man nudged me and gave me a side glance, in which was expressed much pity for the deluded one, accompanied, however, by a warning shake of the head, adjuring me not on any account to speak my mind, and so blight the poor fellow's innocent expectations. “And why didn't you bring a pail?" I asked of the old man, wondering what he had brought, and curious to

ascertain.

"Because I couldn't see after two things at the same time," replied the old fellow cheerily : "my game's 'string.

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He looked, albeit his woeful shabbiness, such an inoffensive old man that I could not for a moment suspect him of designs that were very iniquitous; yet I must confess that for the

time his answer made me feel somewhat uncomfortable. The only games of "string" I had ever heard of were those connected with old Bailey gallows exhibitions and Thuggism. String!" I repeated, with an uncomfortable feeling that the ignorance I was exhibiting was altogether unworthy of of an "umbrella cove." "How do you work it?"

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"What's easier?" returned the mild old gentleman, withdrawing from his coat-tail pocket, as he spoke, a bunch of tangled string and a piece of cord, and a harness maker's awl; "it don't want much working; half way up the hill is the place to be on the look-out, just by that steep bit where the elder trees grow; that's the bit that tells on the weak part of a harness. Snap goes a saddle-girth or a breeching, and then there's a crowd, and it's 'Who's got a bit of string? Why, I've got a bit of string, and I've got a awl; and there you are in two two's, as right as though nothing had happened, and I've earned, perhaps, a shilling. Ah!" continued the ancient harness-mender, with a hopeful wag of his head, "I've seen and talked with a man who once got a sovereign for one of his old braces on that very spot." Hearing this the tramp with the pail nudged me with his elbow, and raised his eyebrows in commiseration for a man who was so weak as to pursue shadows, and who, undoubtedly, would discover his mistake before he was many hours older.

Instructive as were these revelations, it would be mere affectation to pretend that they had an enlivening effect on my spirits. I can say the same for our friend with the tiedup blucher boot, who audibly growled an opinion that the two old gentlemen were a couple of unheavenly old muffs, and that it was sickening to hear 'em. He was a tall, straightbacked, young fellow of five and twenty or thereabouts, and he puffed spitefully at his short pipe as he slouched along, with his hands in his dilapidated trousers' pockets, while a dare-devil and defiant scowl added to the repulsive expression of his evil-looking face. At present he had not opened his mouth except to swear concerning a "raw on his foot, and to spit, and so we trudged on until it grew so dark that we could barely see the dust in the road.

"We shall have a dry walk after all," remarked the old