f any one you pass,
when they make a sound precisely like that of ripping cloth. The women
take great delight in this, and as it is only deemed politeness to
return the compliment, we soon had enough to do. Nobody seemed to take
the diversion amiss, but it was so irresistibly droll to see a large
crowd engaged in this singular amusement, that we both burst into hearty
laughter.

As we began ascending Greenwich Hill, we were assailed with another kind
of game. The ground was covered with smashed oranges, with which the
people above and below were stoutly pelting each other. Half a dozen
heavy ones whizzed uncomfortably near my head as I went up, and I saw
several persons get the full benefit of a shot on their backs and
breasts. The young country lads and lasses amused themselves by running
at full spend down the steep side of a hill. This was, however, a feat
attended with some risk; for I saw one luckless girl describe an arc of
a circle, of which her feet was the centre and her body the radius. All
was noise and nonsense. They ran to and fro under the long, hoary bough
of the venerable oaks that crest the summit, and clattered down the
magnificent forest-avenues, whose budding foliage gave them little
shelter from the passing April showers.

The view from the top is splendid. The stately Thames curves through the
plain below, which loses itself afar off in the mist; Greenwich, with
its massive hospital, lies just at one's feet, and in a clear day the
domes of London skirt the horizon. The wood of the Park is entirely
oak--the majestic, dignified, English oak--which covers, in picturesque
clumps, the sides and summits of the two billowy hills. It must be a
sweet place in summer, when the dark, massive foliage is heavy on every
mossy arm, and the smooth and curving sward shines with thousands of
field-flowers.

Owing to the showers, the streets were coated with mud, of a consistence
as soft and yielding as the most fleecy Persian carpet. Near the gate,
boys were holding scores of donkeys, which they offered us at threepence
for a ride of two miles. We walked down towards the river, and came at
last to a group of tumblers, who with muddy hands and feet were throwing
somersets in the open street. I recognized them as old acquaintances of
the Rue St. Antoine and the Champs Elysees; but the little boy who cried
before, because he did not want to bend his head and foot into a ring,
like a hoop-snake, had learned his part