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SPORT AND PASTIME AT THE EAST END.

"BECAUSE you did not find us at the Crystal Palace, and with selfish satisfaction remarked on our absence from the excursion trains which carried hundreds of thousands out of London; because we were unrepresented in the parks and the more popular pleasure gardens; and your museums and picture galleries were not afflicted by our presence, you will not, if you please, assume that we did not keep Bank Holiday. We," with your highly respectable permission, are the humblest of the humbler class, and thick as bees in a hive we colonise the mazy regions which lie between Whitechapel Church and Limehouse Hole. We are the unconsidered ones of the undercurrents, who eke out a patch and piecemeal existence-goodness knows how. As regards our majority, we are the slaves of the deputy-deputy task-master, whose employer is the gentleman who has the giving out to make of the tens of thousands of suits of male attire for the incredible cheapness of which that eminent firm of slop-tailor merchants -Messrs. Shadrach and Lazarus-are so justly renowned. Likewise, we have in our midst, a liberal sprinkling of wretchedly-paid Irish and German sugar-bakers, and chronically outof-work weavers, and match-box makers, and coster-mongers, and street hawkers, and male and female market porters, and a very considerable number of those who, when the police inspector on duty at the station-house makes the inquiry, modestly describe themselves as "general dealers." homes are squalid and unhealthy, and hundreds of us find the length of even a summer's day entirely too short for our main purpose, which is to keep the wolf from the door, that we work Sundays as well as week days.

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But we kept Bank Holiday despite these trifling disadvantages. Perhaps you never heard of our recreation ground? It is down Bow way. It is beatifully secluded, being shut in with factory walls and black pitched pailings, with the

smoke from a score of tall factory chimneys waving playfully in the breeze. It is a place not easy to find by a stranger. Indeed, although it is next to a large public-house, for all that appears to the contrary it might be the entrance to a dust yard or coal depôt. This, as regards ordinary occasions, but the most innocent person could not have made such a mistake had he chanced to come that way on Bank Holiday. Not that there was any outward display in the way of flaming placards or flags and banners. There was but one exterior sign of the exceptional treat in store for us, and that was neatly chalked on the wall, the notice, " Coppers must not be offered, as they won't be took to-day." At other times it does not do to be so particular. Ours is a working population whose business transactions are governed chiefly by a copper medium of currency. This, however, was a day of great events, and the price of admission was sixpence. A silver sixpence, mind; not that amount in coppers. It was a delicate way of intimating to strangers that it must not be concluded because we were not always genteel that we did not know how to be so when occasion demanded.

Our recreation grounds, though perhaps what would be called severely plain, are very commodious. The pastime we are commonly addicted to is walking and running matches. There is a walk of ashes staked off from a wide encircling standing space and a spacious centre, which would be a green were it not the nature of the grass of these parts to come up like bad coloured hay and to ripen into reed-like splinters. That our host's generous programme of amusements is appreciated is sufficiently shown by the fact that by three o'clock in the afternoon we muster, male and female, at least three thousand. We start with a little bicycling, but that is a mere trifle to amuse us while we steady our exuberant spirits for the enjoyment of the prime features of the day's delights, one of which is a three-mile walking match for substantial money prizes, the competitors being six young women of the neigbourhood-a straightforward and bona fide affair, with the names of all the young ladies duly printed, with the colours they intend to compete in. The first idea was indeed, it was so announced that the fair competitors would appear in ordinary professional pedestrian

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costume, but (or so it was currently rumoured and indignantly commented on) at the last moment a tyrant police law insisted on petticoats.

The ladies engaged were not to be daunted, however, on this account. They appeared on the track blooming and buxom, attired in clean cotton gowns with ribbons in their hair, and, at crack of pistol, stepped out with a will. The cheers were deafening, for each fair competitor had come accompanied by her numerous male and female relatives, and the shrill ejaculations of excited mothers and sisters, and the deeper and more earnest promptings to Sall to go it, to Emma to put the steam on, and to Mary to show 'em her heels, blended in a Babel of sound that of itself was worth sixpence to listen to. Betting on the event was free, as well as it might be. No one could gaze on each of those six young faces-the youngest about eighteen and the oldest four or five and twenty-and not at a single glance feel convinced that it was the spirit of an Englishwoman that stirred her blood and spurred her to desperate best to be first at the tape in the last lap. As round after round was completed, and then the first, and then the second mile was done, the excitement grew. Brothers and lovers, heedless of the warning voice of the umpires dashed to the track and tendered wet pocket handkerchiefs, bottles of water, nay, measures of liquid still more exhilarating, to the perspiring damsels, and it was good to see the disdain with which they waved off all such artificial aids.

Two young Amazons-the foremost two-had long kept neck and neck. The one, a rufus-headed young creature with a freckled visage, evidently of Irish parentage; the other a fair-haired, blue-eyed little woman, who walked with her elbows squared and her fists clenched, and who bore on her face the quiet smile of one who means to win. There are roars for red, and counter roars for light blue, who trips along with the labouring young Irish woman as coolly as though she had that moment laid down her hair brush at the toilet glass. The young Irish woman is brawny of build, and the increased demand for light blue causes her eyes to glance asquint, and her nostrils to dilate in an ominous manner. The young Irish woman's hair is coming

down, when, with a sweet smile, and as though hurry was out of the question, light blue takes a hair pin from her own neat tresses, and hands it to her opponent. It may have been an act of simple good nature; if it was a stroke of stratagem it was a masterpiece. The muscular young Irishwoman squinted terribly for an instant, and a pale ring encircled her mouth. One blow, and she could have lain light blue lifeless on the ash track! But her noble spirit conquered, and she relieved the Etna of her wrath by tossing the proffered hair-pin to the mob, and by giving utterance to a snatch of defiant air of her native country. This was injudicious, as she had no breath to spare. Anyhow, from that point light blue shot away from her and won easily with twenty yards to spare

While our six young ladies retire to a convenient shed to cool their heated brows and refresh exhausted nature (and permit me to mention it was only the most ill-mannered amongst us who insisted on staring in at the window, and through chinks in the roof and walls, while they were so engaged), we had a race, horse against bicyclist with a real jockey in the saddle. Likewise we had some fancy bicycling, and a young lady splendidly attired in blue satin, who was carried "flying-angel" fashion round the track at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. But somehow we did not seem to care very much for this sort of thing. We are used to nothing but the grimly practical, and we find pleasure in nothing that does not in some way or other come within the scope of our daily experiences. To be clad in blue satin and to ride pickaback on a bicycle rider at the rate of fifteen miles an hour may be all very well in poetry, but what we like is the real. Those who cater for our amusement are well aware of this, and therefore it was that the crowning glory of our entertainment was so cunningly planned.

What was it? Fireworks? Blondin on the slack rope with his wheelbarrow? The Salamander, who smokes a cigar and drinks brandy and water in the midst of a flaming fire? No. Each of these exhibitions-nay, all three combinedwould have been regarded as flat and insipid compared with the treat that awaited us. Six market porters in the Borough Market and from Spitalfields, were to compete against each

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other in the carrying of empty bushel baskets piled on each other and balanced on top of their heads! It was asserted that as many as twenty empty bushels could be so carried, the carrier raising the mighty wicker column to his head without assistance. There were the baskets, and tremendous was the cheering that greeted the arrival of the porters—real, white smocked, leathern-capped, ankle-jacked porters, straight, as it were, from the market, and breathless was the watching of the assembled thousands while the bushels were being piled and elevated. The wind was against the performers, and over and over again the towering bushel baskets came with a crash on the heads and shoulders of the closely packed spectators, and then what shrieks of laughter rent the air. But all other sounds were as mere whispers compared with the applauding roar that greeted the porter, who, after many essays, managed to stagger round the course, or nearly, with his lofty pile intact.

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And

It was all over then. There was no band to play " God Save the Queen," but the motley audience of three thousand were fully satisfied and took their departure highly delighted, and with the laughter not yet faded from their faces. yet we are sometimes spoken of as the dangerous classes, as a section of the community grinding and chafing against our miserable lot, and ready at the slightest provocation to rise in rebellion against those who are placed in authority over us! We may not be doves, and there may be a virtue or two we are deficient in, but, if it is any evidence of simple-mindedness to take harmless delight in paying sixpence on a holiday afternoon to see six young women compete in a walking match, and some market porters balancing bushel baskets, it can hardly be denied that we are simple-minded.