mother tells me, the fate of their companions, the remainder of the
constabulary and military forces stationed in London hastened to the
Park, impelled by the fearful fascination, and were added to the piles
of mashed.

Afterwards came the Volunteers, to a man, and then the Cloth. The haste
of most of the curates, and a few bishops whose names have escaped me,
was, said my mother, cataclysmic. Old dandies with creaking joints
tottered along Piccadilly to their certain doom; young clerks in the
city, explaining that they wished to attend their aunt's funeral,
crowded the omnibuses for Kensington and were seen no more; while my
mother tells me that excursion trains from the country were arriving at
the principal stations throughout the day, bearing huge loads of
provincial inamorati.

A constant stream of infatuated men, flowing from east to west, set in,
and though bands of devoted women formed barriers across the principal
thoroughfares for the purpose of barring their progress, no perceptible
check was effected. Once, a Judge of notable austerity was observed to
take to a lamp-post to avoid detention by his wife: once, a well-known
tenor turned down by a by-street, says my mother, pursued by no fewer
than fifty-seven admirers burning to avert his elimination. Members of
Parliament surged across St. James' Park and up Constitution Hill.

Yet in every walk of life, says my mother, there were a few survivors in
the shape of stolid, adamantine misogynists.

Continuing my journey homewards, I traversed Upper Street, Islington,
and the Holloway Road to Highgate Hill, which I ascended at a sharp run.
At the summit I met another newspaper boy carrying a bundle of _Globes_,