Let us turn now, to another portion of the London population, whose recreations present about as strong a contrast as can well be conceived, we mean the Sunday pleasurers; and let us beg our readers to imagine themselves stationed by our side in some well-known rural 'Tea-gardens.'
The heat is intense this afternoon, and the people, of whom there are additional parties arriving every moment, look as warm as the tables which have been recently painted, and have the appearance of being red-hot. What a dust and noise! Men and women, boys and girls, sweethearts and married people, babies in arms, and children in chaises, pipes and shrimps, cigars and periwinkles, tea and tobacco. Gentlemen, in alarming waistcoats, and steel watch- guards, promenading about, three abreast, with surprising dignity (or as the gentleman in the next box facetiously observes, 'cutting it uncommon fat!') ladies, with great, long, white pocket- handkerchiefs like small table-cloths, in their hands, chasing one another on the grass in the most playful and interesting manner, with the view of attracting the attention of the aforesaid gentlemen, husbands in perspective ordering bottles of ginger-beer for the objects of their affections, with a lavish disregard of expense; and the said objects washing down huge quantities of 'shrimps' and 'winkles,' with an equal disregard of their own bodily health and subsequent comfort, boys, with great silk hats just balanced on the top of their heads, smoking cigars, and trying to look as if they liked them, gentlemen in pink shirts and blue waistcoats, occasionally upsetting either themselves, or somebody else, with their own canes.
The heat is intense this afternoon, and the people, of whom there are additional parties arriving every moment, look as warm as the tables which have been recently painted, and have the appearance of being red-hot. What a dust and noise! Men and women, boys and girls, sweethearts and married people, babies in arms, and children in chaises, pipes and shrimps, cigars and periwinkles, tea and tobacco. Gentlemen, in alarming waistcoats, and steel watch- guards, promenading about, three abreast, with surprising dignity (or as the gentleman in the next box facetiously observes, 'cutting it uncommon fat!') ladies, with great, long, white pocket- handkerchiefs like small table-cloths, in their hands, chasing one another on the grass in the most playful and interesting manner, with the view of attracting the attention of the aforesaid gentlemen, husbands in perspective ordering bottles of ginger-beer for the objects of their affections, with a lavish disregard of expense; and the said objects washing down huge quantities of 'shrimps' and 'winkles,' with an equal disregard of their own bodily health and subsequent comfort, boys, with great silk hats just balanced on the top of their heads, smoking cigars, and trying to look as if they liked them, gentlemen in pink shirts and blue waistcoats, occasionally upsetting either themselves, or somebody else, with their own canes.
