nly
the streets for playgrounds, and these parks are filled with children,
especially on Saturday afternoons. There is one called Battersea Park,
near the river, where you may sit on a little knoll at one end, and, in
summer, as far as you can see there are boys playing cricket. They are
so mixed up that it is difficult to tell which ball belongs to which,
and often a good hit sends one ball flying into the middle of the next
game. Some of them have real wickets, and at one end there is a
carefully kept ground where men play; but some of the little boys have
no wickets, and only a bit of wood for a bat. So they get a stick from
somewhere and make it stand up in the ground, and then hang one of their
shabby little coats round it to make a wicket; but they shout loudly
with joy, and enjoy themselves at their game just as much as the bigger
boys with real wickets.

A thing you very often see in London, and, indeed, in other towns, too,
is a man sitting on the bare stone pavement drawing pictures on the
stones with coloured chalks. Sometimes he does them very well, and makes
scenes of battles and views of pretty places or ships at sea, but at
other times they are hideous and badly drawn. He does this in order that
people may give him pennies as they pass. He is not allowed to beg, and
if he tried to the policeman would come and take him up; but he doesn't
like hard work, so he sits beside his pictures and holds his cap out
piteously, and very often people give him pennies in passing, so he
makes a living without too much trouble. But unless he is old or
crippled, he ought to be doing better work than this. There are always a
great many odd men who have no work to do in London; there are some who
earn a living by going about in the early morning, when people put their
dustbins out, and picking out anything that they think they can sell--a
disgusting trade; others used to watch until they saw a cab with luggage
on it, and then they ran after it sometimes for miles and miles, and
when it stopped they would offer to carry the boxes upstairs. These men
certainly earned their money, for they had to run fast and far, and to
carry a box up the flights and flights of stairs in a London house is
not an easy task; but, unfortunately, they were generally men who were
out of work through their own fault, who had been drunken or idle or
rude, and they were not at all pleasant to deal with, and sometimes they
made themselves very disagree