The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1881-05-19
London Seen From o BUS Top.

London is full of cheap luxuries. One
of these is riding atop the omnibus. All
the London busses have top seats. An
iron ladder runs up the stern of the
craft, and up this you Chamber. There
are tarpaulins for covering the passen-
gers in wet weather. In London it vets
on an average about once a day. Girls,
too, will ride atop the ''bus" in fair
weather. OF course not every girl
not the daughters of the nobility or the
prelates. But the daughters of the
commons do. And these are the prot
tier daughters, too.
The favorite seat is on the "knife-
board" with the driver. This will
hold two on either side of that import
ant functionary. Some of those bus
drivers are quite "smart" in their at
tire and sport rose in the button-hole.
They seem as q class to take pride in
their calling. As class, also, they are
fat. They contrast very favorably with
the men in rags who drive the New
York street-cars fourteen or fifteen
hours per day, and who may be some-
horse-blankets for overcoats. The Lon
don bus top gives You view of life on
the second floors. In England they call
tuCSC luo IESt OuC VI III
ite drives was along the Gray Inn road.
This narrow, crooked street runs by
that ancient stronghold of law, Lin
coins Inn Fields. and so on for couple
of miles to the Great Midland Railway
station. All the way up you get hum
dreds of views OF London domestic life
fifteen or twenty feet distant, as seen
through these first floor windows. Often
the bus is followed by q boy or two
boys. who turn themselves into cart
wheels and turn after the bus, and as
fast as the bus. too. in the hope of a
possible ha'penny from an admiring
passenger. The agility of those boys
makes an old man envious of their Wig
or and muscle, clad though it be in
rags.
There is always q show of some sort
in the streets OF London. Shows are
there; and free street shows we never
see ON this side of the water. Street
artists cover yards of pavement with
sketches of birds and beasts and marine
views in colored chalks. Stage Irish
men in short clothes. dudeen and shil-
lalah dance and sing. Highlanders
propel bag-pipes and dance high
stepping dances over crossed swords.
Acrobats, in tights and spangles, bal
ance bayonets on their chins and noses.
Acrobats, tightly bound with ropes
crossing their bodies from head to foot,
writhe themselves out of those ropes
by virtue of wonderful talent for mus
cular contraction. Performing dogs
and cats and canaries and mice do
stupid tricks in an apparent condition
of semi-stupefaction. Bands of English
negro minstrels, in striped trousers and
long calico coat tails, give curbstone
exhibitions of the cockney's idea of
negro humor. Melancholy buglers,
lone, forlorn and in the rustiest suits OF
black ever seen. bugle into open doors.
Blind men, with long trails of children
and wife, slowly tramp through the
middle of the more retired streets, roar
ing out doleful songs for sweet charity s
sake. Cats'-meat peddlers, with
baskets full of boiled horse, sliced and
stuck on skewers, at penny a skewer,
call out: "Cats' meatr' with sharp,
quick cry, and all the family cats in the
morning hear the welcome cry from
afar and come trotting to the front
doors. head erect, eyes glaring and tail
upright, as stiff as a nlarlin-spiEe.
Blind Bible readers at certain corners
read aloud the Scriptures on long Bibles
IN raised lettcrS LOT the eulucatiOn Oh
the passers-by, and in hopes also of the
universal penny. Trained pigeons fly
afar from dovecotes on wheels and at
SOUND of a trumpet quickly wheel and
return to their home. Wonderful music
is forced by an artist out of the nozzle
of q coffee-pot. Imitation old sailors
sing sea-ballads. hurdy gurdies play in
in the courts and ragged boys and girls
and young men and women, equally
grimy in face, hands and attire, i'm
provise quadrilles aud round dances.
Italians, in sheepskin coats and buskins,
force execrable sounds from pigskin
bagpipes, and the song they sing in &C.
compartment is something once heard
never to be forgotten. If one of their lit
tie grinning, dancing animals of children
catches sight of your face at q window
it ceases not to howl and hop, first on
one leg then on the other, until you pull
down the blinds and give every intima.
tion that the house is to be shut up fol
the season. German bands break ou,
everywhere. Punch, Judy and that dis.
gusted dog Toby, which always goes
through his part under protest, crown
the great London Free street-shows.- s.
Prenti-e Aniford, in San francisco
,.,Io