not to be had elsewhere in our iron civilization. One might accuse their
taste, but certainly they were more interesting than the rows of young
men perched on the top course of the fence, in a wide variety of straw
hats, or even than the red-coated soldiers who boldly occupied the penny
chairs along the walks and enjoyed each the vigorous rivalry of girls
worshipping him on either hand.

They boldly occupied the penny chairs, for the danger that they would be
made to pay was small. The sole collector, a man well in years and of a
benevolent reluctance, passed casually among the rows of seats, and took
pennies only from those who could most clearly afford it. There was a
fence round a pavilion where a band was playing, and within there were
spendthrifts who paid fourpence for their chairs, when the music could
be perfectly well heard without charge outside. It was, in fact, heard
there by a large audience of bicyclers of both sexes, who stood by their
wheels in numbers unknown in New York since the fad of bicycling began
to pass several years ago. The lamps shed a pleasant light upon the
crowd, after the long afterglow of the sunset had passed and the first
stars began to pierce the clear heavens. But there was always enough
kindly obscurity to hide emotions that did not mind being seen, and to
soften the details which could not be called beautiful. As the dark
deepened, the prone shapes scattered by hundreds over the grass looked
like peaceful flocks whose repose was not disturbed by the human voices
or by the human feet that incessantly went and came on the paths. It was
a touch, however illusory, of the rusticity which lingers in so many
sorts at the heart of the immense city, and renders it at unexpected
moments simple and homelike above all other cities.

The evening when this London pastoral offered itself was the close of a