s to the gymnasts that, in course of evolution, we have lost our
tails. They would have been so convenient on the horizontal bar, where
that persevering young workman was still engaged in the pursuit of
apoplexy by hanging head downwards. Soon after we got there an excellent
band commenced playing, not in the kiosk, lest we should be beguiled
into dancing. The first piece was a slow movement, which could scarcely
have been objected to by any Sabbatarian, unless he was so
uncompromising as to think all trumpets wrong. The second was the
glorious march from "Athalie;" and then--my blood runs cold as I write
it--a sort of pot pourri, in the midst of which came the "Dutchman's
Little Wee Dog," considerably disguised in the way of accompaniment and
variation, I own, but the "Little Wee Dog" beyond a doubt. Then I
understood why the band was not in the kiosk; for, fourteen stone though
I be, I felt all my toes twiddling inside my boots at that time as
wickedly as though it had been Monday morning. There were fourteen or
fifteen loud brass instruments, with a side and bass drum and cymbals.
All these were playing the "Little Wee Dog" to their brazen hearts'
content, and only one gentleman on a feeble piccolo-flute trying to
choke their impiety by tootling out a variation, just as the stringed
instruments in the glorious "Reformation Symphony" of Mendelssohn try in
vain to drown with their sensuous Roman airs the massive chords of the
old Lutheran chorale--"Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott." I really could
not bear it any longer, and was rising to go when they stopped; and as
the gentleman who played the circular bass got outside his portentous
instrument, I found he had a little wee dog of his own who retired into
the bell of the big trumpet when his master laid it on the grass.
Perhaps it was in honour of this minute animal the air was selected.
However, I could not lend myself to such proceedings; so I bribed my
youthful charge with a twopenny bottle of frothless ginger beer to come
out of her swing and return to the regions of orthodoxy. The Teutonic
gentlemen were still hooting and yelling as we crossed the corner of
their croquet lawn, until I expected to see them attack one another
with the mallets and use the balls for missile warfare; but it was only
their peculiar way of enjoying themselves.

My little friend described the action of our working men in the croquet
lawn as "spooning," and also drew my attention to the fact