each side of him were encamped distressful little families, grasping
spades and buckets and seated on their corded luggage, unable to move
because of the railway strike, while behind him flared a huge
advertisement that said, "The Sea is Calling you." Along the kerbstone a
few yards in front were ranged the children of the district, row upon
row, uncombed, in rags, filthy from head to foot, but silent with joy
and admiration as they gazed upon the face of war. For many a gentle
girl and boy that Friday and Saturday were the days of all their
lives--the days on which the pretty soldiers came.

Nor was it only the charm of nice clothes and personal appearance that
attracted them. Horror added its tremulous delight. There the sentry
stood, ready to kill people at a word. His right knee was slightly bent,
and against his right foot he propped the long wooden instrument that he
killed with. In little pouches round his belt he carried the pointed
bits of metal that the instrument shoots out quicker than arrows. It was
whispered that some of them were placed already inside the gun itself,
and could be fired as fast as a teacher could count, and each would kill
a man. And at the end of the gun gleamed a knife, about as long as a
butcher's carving-knife. It would go through a fattish person's body as
through butter, and the point would stick a little way through the
clothes at his back. Down each side of the knife ran a groove to let the
blood out, so that the man might die quicker. It was a pleasure to look
at such a thing. It was better than watching the sheep and oxen driven
into the Aldgate slaughter-houses. It was almost as good as the glimpse
of the executioner driving up to Pentonville in his dog-cart the evening
before an execution.

Few have given the Home Office credit for the amount of interesting and
cheap amusement it then afforded by parcelling out the country among the