Now and then, the slow-moving, small-windowed,
smoking-chimneyed fair waggon appears
to swell the ceaseless procession; and the
gilded carriage of a lord mayor or a City
sheriff. Sometimes I am permitted to gaze upon
the very last of the hackney coaches, which
still plies for family hire at the South-Eastern
railway terminus, and a four-horse stage-coach
still determined to beat the parliamentary train,
or perish in the ambitious attempt.

Dust-carts claim their right to a passage across
my overloaded back, in company with innumerable
travellers' traps that are painted with
sham doors and windows, to look like carriages
filled with the aristocracy, instead of with
ribbons, shawls, and lace. Small pony-gigs are
observed, conducted by timid drivers, who wish
they had taken a less frequented highway; and
fast tandem dog-carts, coming from some livery
stable near the Stock Exchange, and going to a
whitebait dinner at Greenwich.

There are waggons, again, full of brown
sides of bacon, lying in the straw, and looking
like mattresses; waggons full of steaming grains,
or dark cocoa-looking tan; and carts full of
large birch-brooms which stick out on each side,
and sweep the windows of the vehicles as they
pass.

Here all desperate omnibus rivalry ceases, all
"nursing" is unknown, and for five minutes, at
least, the weary opposition conveyance is at rest.
Each vehicle takes its allotted place, according
to its turn, in its allotted "fast" or "slow"
groove, governed by the dusty policemen on
duty, who stand in the middle of the road.

Trucks drawn by donkeys, and filled with
heavy costermongers, returning home after their
day's sales are concluded, mingle with other
trucks, full of square patches of peat, and drawn
by boys: or full of toys, in which strange faces
of wooden figures peep from between the rails,
and painted wooden soldiers lie helplessly on
their backs, like dead warriors after a battle.

Country drays, from small country ale
breweries, appear with curtains at their sides,
which look like hammock fittings on board
ship; and waggons, filled with empty baskets,
rlide along from the Borough or Covent-garden
market, while their light but lofty cargo sways
on high like the leaning tower of Pisa or the
spire of Chesterfield church.

The humble wheel-barrow is not unrepresented
in the procession, any more than the
child's perambulator (going home quite new), or
the slender, fragile, spider-like velocipede.

Shining prison-vans, driven and conducted by
policemen, sometimes give a variety of interest
to the show; and also dingy, letter-empty post-office
vehicles, with their doors flying open, and
their dark interiors turned into a free-and-easy
omnibus by half-a-dozen bold and ragged boys.

Fat men squeeze themselves, by pairs, into
narrow Hansom cabs, and roll over my back,
with their perspiring, shiny, uncovered heads
protruding from the hooded front of the vehicle.

Ladies pass over me in neat little broughams, to
stockbrokers, bankers, dividend-offices, and visits;
dozing, apoplectic men, whose heavy heads are
buried in their bulging shirt-fronts, roll by in
feather-bed fitted chariots; servants pass over in
four-wheeled cabs, on their road to a new place,
with their faces looking very anxious, and the
whole of their worldly goods exposed on the roof
of their conveyance; pleasure vans are seen in
the throng, filled with equal layers of men's hats
and women's bonnets, and watched over by a
gentleman, who stands upon the steps, and disturbs
the business reveries of the passers-by, by
playing on the cornopean.

Joyous boys are being brought from school,
with fishing-rods and cricket-bats sticking out
of the windows of their carriages; and melancholy
boys are being taken back to school, looking
very sick and miserable in their threadbare
cab corners.

Pale invalids are being supported in carriages
by anxious friends, who are conveying them to
some last hope of infirmity, where the winds of
heaven are said to blow less roughly; and rollicking
sailors are balancing themselves on the
top of bedding placed upon the top of their
overloaded cabs on their way to Portsmouth, to
join their outward bound vessels.

The foot-passengers, who are never forbidden
to crowd upon me, even when I am under repair,
are often loaded in a way that adds materially
to my burden. Baskets, carpet-bags, portmanteaus,
reticules, walking-sticks, umbrellas, bird-cages,
dogs, and fish-baskets, I may fairly expect;
but, pick-axes, shovels, warming-pans,
chests of drawers, window-blinds, and a variety
of other similar things are carried to increase
my torment. Nearly every overloaded vehicle
is driven on my road, and nearly every overloaded
porter or errand-boy is sent across my
foot-way. Taking the number of persons as
well as the vehicles that pass across me in the
course of the year, the delays and loss of time
they suffer, and the value to them of the time
they lose, I have often endeavoured to arrive
at the money cost of the obstructive annoyance
on my back. It seems to be that the national
debt is a mere milk-score in comparison.

The government that rules over me is the
stem government of Move-on; but accidents will
occur, even on the best-regulated bridges. Stray
dogs will be run over, horses will tumble down,
or hop-waggons will give way; and the latter
event is a thing that at once makes itself felt
through all the main thoroughfare arteries of
London.

One annoyance I am happily spared by my
tormentors, though only from a purely selfish
consideration. A stately funeral, making its
pompous way from Finsbury to Norwood Cemetery,
never attempts, for a moment, to encumber
my unfortunate back, but seeks a more congenial
passage through the black and silent
cloisters of the iron bridge of Southwark. I
am afraid that such an extra procession, however
costly and imposing, would stand but little
chance of being treated with becoming respect,
especially if it made its appearance on my road
in the busy part of the four-and-twenty hours.