nd once, more recently, at a workmen's flower
show; and felt considerable interest in the place, especially as the
People had been polite enough to send me a season ticket, so that I was
one of the People myself.

This People's Garden was not exactly a Paradise yet, though it is in a
fair way of becoming one. It is a spot of some fifty acres reclaimed
from the scrubbiest part of Wormwood Scrubbs, and made the focus of a
club of working men, of whom I am very proud indeed to be one. Indeed, I
do not see why throughout the remainder of this article I should not use
the first person plural. I will. Well, then, we secured this spot, and
we have got in the first place one of the finest--I believe the
finest--dancing platforms in England, for we as a community are
Terpsichorean, though I, as an individual, am not. I felt it necessary
to give up dancing when my weight turned the balance at fourteen stone
odd. Then we can give our friends refreshments from a bottle of
champagne down to tea and cresses. We have all sorts of clubs, dramatic
and otherwise, and rather plume ourselves on having put up our
proscenium ourselves, that is with our own hands and hammers and nails.
There is the great advantage of being a Working Man or one of the
People. If you had been with me that Sunday you would have seen a glow
of conscious pride suffusing my countenance as I read the bills of our
last amateur performance, consisting of the "Waterman" and "Ici on parle
Francais," played on the boards which I, in my corporate capacity, had
planed, and sawn, and nailed. My route last Sunday lay across the crisp
sward of the Scrubbs; and it was quite a pleasure to be able to walk
there without danger of falling pierced by the bullet of some erratic
volunteer; for there are three butts on Wormwood Scrubbs, which I
examined with minuteness on Sunday, and was exercised to see by marks on
the brickwork how very wide of the target a volunteer's shot can go. I
wonder there is not a wholesale slaughter of cattle in the neighbouring
fields. The garden lies on the other side of the Great Western Railway,
across which I had to trespass in order to get to it. But the man in
charge regarded me with indulgence, for was I not a working man and a
"mate?" The portion of the garden abutting on the rail is still
unreclaimed prairie. The working men have begun at the top of the hill,
and are working downwards.

There is a good-sized refreshment-room at the entrance, with