As We Strolled Down One Of The Broad Roads Under The Shade Of The
Noble Trees, We Saw The Sun
Setting in a red-gold haze; a glory of
vivid colour made indescribably tender and opalescent by the kind of
Luminous mist that veils it; a wholly English sunset, and an
altogether lovely one. And quite away from the other knots of
people, there leaned against a bit of wire fence a poor old man
surrounded by half a dozen children and one tired woman with a
nursing baby. He had a tattered book, which seemed to be the story
of the Gospels, and his little flock sat on the greensward at his
feet as he read. It may be that he, too, had been a shouter in his
lustier manhood, and had held a larger audience together by the
power of his belief; but now he was helpless to attract any but the
children. Whether it was the pathos of his white hairs, his garb of
shreds and patches, or the mild benignity of his eye that moved me,
I know not, but among all the Sunday shouters in Hyde Park it seemed
to me that that quavering voice of the past spoke with the truest
note.
Chapter VI. The English Park Lover.
The English Park Lover, loving his love on a green bench in
Kensington Gardens or Regent's Park, or indeed in any spot where
there is a green bench, so long as it is within full view of the
passer-by, - this English public lover, male or female, is a most
interesting study, for we have not his exact counterpart in America.
He is thoroughly respectable, I should think, my urban Colin.
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