itants of
Hampstead, both old and young, swim their dogs after sticks and float
a great variety of boats. On fine mornings there is such a confusion
of boats and sticks and barking dogs that, if you are lucky, you can
come up with an Irish terrier and an ash plant and go down rather
proudly with a Newfoundland and the latest model of _Shamrock XIV_.

Looking downwards from the top you will discern on the open slopes and
twinkling amongst the vegetation a vast multitude of white poles.
On Saturday afternoons, I believe, there are more poles on Hampstead
Heath than in the whole of Kieff. Each pole is attached to a boy
scout, and it has been calculated that, if all the boy scouts in
Hampstead were to set their poles end to end in a perfectly straight
line from the flagstaff, pointing in a south-easterly direction, they
would be properly told off by their scout-masters for behaving in such
an idiotic manner.

Next perhaps in interest to the boy scouts, both because of their
quaint mediaeval costume and the long lances which they carry in their
hands, are the rangers of Hampstead Heath. Feudal retainers of the
L.C.C., they sally ever and anon from their lairs with lances couched
to spear up the pieces of paper which the people of London have left
behind; and this paper-sticking is really the best sport to be enjoyed
now on Hampstead Heath, unless one counts fishing for dace in the
ponds, which I take to be the most contemplative recreation, except
coal-mining, in the British Isles.

Amongst the very many famous people who either live or have lived
at Hampstead may be mentioned Mr. GERALD DU MAURIER, CONSTABLE, Lord
BYRON, Lord LEVERHULME, JOHN MASEFIELD, JOE BECKETT, the younger PITT,
Miss MARIE LLOYD, KEATS, Madame PAVLOVA, ROMNEY, CLAUDE DUVAL and
RICHARD TURPIN, the last of whom, I believe, bequeathed his spurs to
the borough in grateful memory of all that it had done for him. There
are no highwaymen to be met at Hampstead Heath now, but the
solicitor and house-agent of the man from whom I am trying to lease
Number----but there, perhaps I had better not go into that just now.
I cannot however omit to say a few more words about KEATS, because
the nation is trying to buy his house, although it has not yet been
decided which of them is to live in it if they get it. In the garden
of this house the poet is said to have written his celebrated "Ode to
a Nightingale," and the nightingale may still be heard on Hampstead
Heath