Читать книгу The Curiosities of Ale & Beer - John Bickerdyke - Страница 17
ОглавлениеBe it so. But Ceres, rural Goddess, at the best Meanly supports her vot’ry, enough for her If ill-persuading hunger she repell, And keep the soul from fainting: to enlarge, To glad the heart, to sublimate the mind And wing the flagging spirits to the sky, Require the united influence and aid Of Bacchus, God of Hops, with Ceres joined, ’Tis he shall generate the buxom beer.
But hops have other uses than the generation of “the buxom beer.” The discovery, which we consider an important one, was made a few years back that hop-bine makes excellent ensilage. The subject was {83} first mentioned, so far as we know, in a letter to The Field of December 6th, 1884, from A. L., probably, agent to H. A. Brassey, Esq., of Aylesford. The writer gave an account of the opening of a silo, in one compartment of which had been placed eight tons of hop-bines, in the beginning of the previous September. An account of the experiment was also sent by a visitor at the farm, from whose letter the following extract seems to us well worth perusal:—“The hop-bine is at present an entirely waste material, except for littering purposes; and not a few of the local farmers were anxious to see how it would turn out, and whether stock would eat the hop-bine ensilage or not. No experiment could be more satisfactory. The apparent condition and smell of a great deal of it was even superior to that of several of the other varieties; and when a bag of it was taken to the homestead and offered to some fattening steers, which had been well fed just before, and were not in the least hungry, they devoured it with great alacrity, and seemed heartily to enjoy the new food; consequently this will be good news to hop-growers.”
Early in ’85, the following important letter on the subject appeared in the Kentish Gazette, from Mr. T. M. Hopkins, Lower Wick, Worcester:—
“Having learnt from Mr. Seymour, agent to H. A. Brassey, Esq., that hop-bine made first-rate ensilage, last Oct. I made two stacks of it 16ft. by 16ft., and 18ft. high. After letting it ferment freely, I pressed down with Reynolds and Co.’s patent screw press, and next day filled up again; and, when sufficiently fermented, again pressed down, and this lasted all through the hop-picking. I have now used nearly the whole of it, and calculate that it has saved me some 80 tons of hay; no more hop-bine do I waste in future as I have hitherto done. My horses have had nothing else for two months, excepting their usual allowance of corn, and I never had them looking better. I have also had 100 head of cattle, stores, cows, and calves feeding on it for a fortnight, and they do well. Dr. Voelcker, chemist to the R.A.S.E., who has analysed it, says: ‘It has plenty of good material in it, and is decidedly rich in nitrogen, nor is the amount of acid excessive or likely to harm cattle.’ Another analyst, Mr. W. E. Porter, F.C.S., says: ‘It contains more flesh-forming matter and less indigestible fibre than hay dried at 212.’ Planters should leave off growing hops to sell at present average prices, 40s. to 50s., which is a dead loss. Let the plant run wild, and they may every season cut two or three immense crops of material that will make ensilage of unexceptionable quality.” {84}
To this there is little we can add.39 The importance of the subject is evident. We may, however, express a hope that hop-growers will not act on Mr. Hopkins’ suggestion, and only grow hops for the sake of the bine—English hops are too good for that. We have spoken of hop-bine ensilage as a discovery, but French farmers have for years mixed green hop-leaves with their cows’ food, under the belief, rightly or wrongly we know not, that it increases the flow of milk. Possibly in the far past hops were cultivated as fodder, and even used as ensilage. Silos we know were used anciently, though only recently re-introduced owing principally to the attention called to them in The Field and the agricultural journals.
39 In a letter with which we have recently been favoured by Mr. Hopkins, that gentleman says: “I have every reason to believe in the great value of Hop-Bine Ensilage … milking-cows do well with it, and it does not affect the flavour of the milk.”
The stem of the hop contains a vegetable wax, and sap from which can be made a durable reddish brown. Its ash is used in the manufacture of Bohemian glass; and it also makes excellent pulp for paper. From its fibres ropes and coarse textile fabrics of considerable strength have been made. The Van de Schelldon process of cloth-making from the stem of the hop, invented, we believe, in 1866, is shortly as follows: The stalks are cut, done up in bundles, and steeped like hemp. After steeping they are dried in the sun. They are then beaten with mallets to loosen the fibres, which are afterwards carded and woven in the usual way. It is from the thicker stems that ropes can be made.
Several patents have been taken out for manufacturing paper from hops. One taken out by a Mr. Henry Dyer was for paper made of fresh or spent hops, or spent malt, alone or combined with other materials. In 1873 a meeting of paper-makers was held in France, before whom was exhibited a textile material made from the bark of the hop-stalk, the outer skin being removed and subjected to chemical treatment. It was in long pieces, and supple and delicate of texture.
About ten years ago it was announced, in a journal devoted to photography, that an infusion of hops, mixed with pyrogallic acid, albumen of eggs, and filtered in the ordinary way, could be used as a preservative for the plates then in use by photographers. Plates preserved with this, dried hard with a fine gloss, and yielded negatives of very high quality. A mixture of beer and albumen was formerly used {85} for the same purpose, but owing to the varying quality and properties of the beer, was very uncertain in its action.
The root of the hop is not without its uses, containing starchy substances which can be made into glucose and alcohol. It also contains a certain amount of tannin, which, it has been suggested, might be used with advantage in tanneries.
Until recently trumpeted forth in the advertisements of a certain patent medicine, it was not generally known outside the medical profession that hops possessed medicinal qualities of considerable value. Old medical writers, however, must have changed their views on the subject within a hundred years after the time of Andrew Boorde, from whose works we have already quoted a few lines. Wm. Coles, Herbalist, in his History of Plants, published in 1657, states that certain preparations of hops are cures for about half the ills that flesh is heir to. Another old writer declares the young shoots of the hop, eaten like asparagus, to be very wholesome and effectual to loosen the body (the poorer classes in some parts of Europe still eat the young hops as a vegetable); the head and tendrils good to purify the blood in the scurvy and most other cutaneous diseases (which scurvy is not), and the decoctions of the flower and syrup thereof useful against pestilential fevers. Juleps and apozems are also prepared with hops for hypochondriacal and hysterical affections; and a pillow stuffed with hops is used to induce sleep. This last method, by the way, was taken advantage of by the medical advisers of George III. That unfortunate king, when in a demented condition, always slept on a pillow so prepared. Another writer tells us that the Spaniards were in the habit of boiling a pound of hop roots in a gallon of water, reducing it to six pints, and drinking half a pint when in bed of a morning, under the belief that it possessed the same qualities as sarsaparilla. Dr. Brooks, in his Dispensatory, published in 1753, concurs with the older writers on the subject.
Observations and Experiments on the Humulus Lupulus of Linnæus, with an account of its use in Gout and other Diseases, is the title of a pamphlet by a Mr. Freake, of Tottenham Court Road, published in 1806. The author states that a patient of his, who was in want of a bitter tincture, found all the usual remedies disagree with him, and after numerous unsatisfactory experiments, fell back upon a preparation of hops, which appeared to answer its purpose. This led Mr. Freake to try further experiments with the hop, when he came to the conclusion that it was an excellent remedy for relieving the pains of gout, acting sometimes when opium failed. {86}
Hops have also been employed with good effect in poultices. Dr. Trotter, in one of his medical works, quotes a letter from an assistant of Dr. Geach, once senior surgeon of the Royal Hospital at Plymouth, in which the writer says that he had during six months experimented with hops, and found that a poultice made of a strong decoction of hops, oatmeal, and water was an excellent remedy for ulcers, which should first be fomented with the decoction.
Dr. Paris, writing of the hop about the year 1820, says, “It is now generally admitted that they constitute the most valuable ingredient in malt liquors. Independently of the flavour and tonic virtues which they communicate, they precipitate, by means of their astringent principle, the vegetable mucilage, and thus remove from the beer the active principle of its fermentation; without hops, therefore, we must either drink our malt liquors new and ropy, or old and sour.”
In the introduction to Murray’s Handbook of Kent it is stated that invalids are occasionally recommended to pass whole days in hop grounds as a substitute for the usual exhibition of Bass or Allsopp. In hop gardens the air is no doubt impregnated with lupuline, so there may be something in this.
At the present day lupuline is often used in medicine. Lupuline was the name given by Ives to the yellow dust covering the female flower of hops. Later, Ives, Chevallier, and Pellatau gave that name, not to the dust, but to the bitter principle it contains. The recognized preparations of hops are an infusion, a tincture, and an extract. They are stomachic, tonic, and soporific. Dr. John Gardner, in one of his works on medicine, says that “bitter ale, or the lupuline in pills which it forms by simply rubbing between the fingers and warming, are the best forms for using hops in dyspepsia and feeble appetite, which they will often relieve.” The lupuline powder is easily separated from the hops by means of a sieve. A hop bath to relieve pain is also recommended by Dr. Gardner for certain painful internal diseases. It is made thus: two pounds of hops are boiled in two gallons of water for half an hour, then strained and pressed, and the fluid added to about thirty gallons of water. This bath has been much praised. Hop beer (without alcohol) is another preparation of the plant which has been recommended.
In America the hop is highly appreciated for medicinal purposes. There are three preparations of it in the authorized code: a tincture, a liquid extract, and an oleo-resin.
So much, then, for the history and economic and medicinal uses of {87} the hop. Before we close this chapter it is our intention to give a short account of the hop-growing countries and districts, of hopfields, of hop-growers’ multifarious troubles, and some description of what are perhaps the greatest curiosities of the subject—the hop-pickers.
The European hop-growing countries stand in the following order: Germany takes the lead with about 477,000 acres of hop gardens, England following, and then Belgium, Austria, France, and other states (Denmark, Greece, Portugal, &c.), in which the acreage is insignificant. According to Dr. Thudichum, 53,000,000 kilogrammes of hops are produced annually in Europe, and in good years production may rise to over 80,000,000. In America hops have been cultivated for more than two centuries, having been introduced into the New Netherlands in 1629 and into Virginia in 1648. Hop-culture is now common in most of the northern states.
We believe we are correct in saying that the best hop years America has ever known, were 1866 to 1868, when the amount produced was from 2,400 lbs. to 2,500 lbs. per acre. In 1870 the total production was 25,456,669 lbs. In Australia hops are extensively cultivated; they are also grown in China and India. In the latter place they have not been introduced many years, but beer of a fair quality is made in some of the hill stations. The following table shows approximately the acreage of hops in England at the present time:
| District. | Acreage. |
|---|---|
| Mid Kent | 17,150 |
| Weald of Kent | 12,601 |
| East Kent | 11,885 |
| Sussex | 9,501 |
| Hereford | 6,087 |
| Hampshire | 2,938 |
| Worcester | 2,767 |
| Surrey | 2,439 |
| Other Counties | 251 |
From the eastern limits of the hop gardens at Sandwich to the western boundary in Hereford, hard by the borders of Wales, there are, then, about 65,619 acres of hop gardens, or hop “yards,” as they are called in some districts, e.g., Worcester and Hereford. North Cray, in Nottinghamshire, formerly grew a good quantity of hops, but the plantations are now considerably reduced, and this applies also to the Stowmarket district, in Suffolk, and to Essex. The number of acres devoted to the cultivation of hops has always been subject to great {88} fluctuations; thus in 1807 they numbered 38,218; in 1819, 51,000; in 1830, 46,727; and in 1875, 70,000.
Dr. Booker wrote that for quality of hops, Herefordshire stood first Worcestershire second, Kent third, and North Cray fourth; but he was probably mistaken, for the hops of East Kent have always been held to be the best in all England, pre-eminent alike for strength and flavour; those of Farnham, however, run them very closely. Our English hops, indeed, are far superior to most of those imported, and the foreigners are rarely used in beer without an admixture of home-grown hops. Immense quantities now come from abroad; in 1828 only 4 cwt. were imported!
Until quite recently, the whole of the hops in this country were poled upon much the same system as that described in Reynolde Scot’s old pamphlet—that is, three or four plants would be grown on a hillock, each having a pole to climb. Now, the poles are largely supplemented by wires arranged in various ways, sometimes, when covered with bine, forming bell-tents of hops; and sometimes running from pole to pole. Other wires leaving them at right angles are attached to pegs in the ground. The aspect of the gardens is greatly changed, but they are not less beautiful than of yore. Train the hop as you will, you cannot make it unlovely. The vines twist lovingly round the slender wires and tall poles, the former bending under their weight and swaying to and fro in the breeze. From pole to pole run the topmost shoots, and the whole field is one large arbour, roofed, if it be autumn, with verdant foliage and golden green fruit. Then, may be, the sunlight here and there touches the glorious clusters, giving them still richer colours. “The hop for his profit I thus do exalt,” wrote old Tusser, “and for his grace and beauty,” he might have added, but the worthy Thomas was nothing if not practical. Howitt, in his Year Book of the Country thus writes of the hop country in autumn: “But all is not sombre and meditative in September. The hopfield and the nutwood are often scenes of much jolly old English humour and enjoyment. In Kent and Sussex the whole country is odorous with the aroma of hop, as it is breathed from the drying kilns and huge wagons filled with towering loads of hops, thronging the road to London. But not only is the atmosphere perfumed with hops, but the very atmosphere of the drawing-room and dining-room too. Hops are the grand flavour of conversation as well as of beer. Gentlemen, ladies, clergymen, noblemen, all are growers of hops, and deeply interested in the state of the crop and the market.” {89}
The use of wires is a serious matter for hop-pole growers if the following calculation, made by some ingenious person, be correct. Suppose that 45,000 acres of hops are under cultivation, and each acre annually requires 800 new poles, the total annual requirement will be 36,000,000 poles. Each acre of underwood from which poles are cut produces about 3,000. Every year, therefore, 12,000 acres of underwood must be cut to supply the demand. If each acre produces on an average 2,000 poles, which is nearer the truth than 3,000, then 18,000 acres must be cut annually to supply the hop-gardens with poles.
Poets, in their search for similes, have not overlooked hops and hop poles. In Gay’s A New Song of New Similes occur the following lines:—
Hard is her heart as flint or stone, She laughs to see me pale; And merry as a grig is grown, And brisk as bottled ale.
Ah me! as thick as hops or hail The fine men crowd about her.
Then Cotton, in his verses to John Bradshaw, Esq., writes:—
Mustachios looked like heroes’ trophies Behind their arms in th’ Herald’s office; The perpendicular beard appeared Like hop-poles in a hopyard reared.
Hop-growers’ troubles, furnish a theme of which, were we hop-growers, we fear our readers would weary, for a volume might very well be filled with a relation of them. Not being hop-growers, and having much to write about ere we inscribe the sad word “finis,” we must content ourselves only with such an account as will give our readers a general idea of the subject. To begin with, the annual outlay per acre in the gardens is very great, being about £36. A hop acre, be it observed, is not an ordinary acre, but contains a thousand hop plants in rows, six or seven feet apart, and is equal to about two-thirds the statutory acre.
No crops are more precarious than the humulus lupulus. How said Dr. Booker?—
The spiral hop, high mantling, how to train No common care to Britain’s gen’rous sons, Lovers of “nut-brown ale”—sing fav’ring Muse!
{90}
A glance at statistics will show the truth of our statement. In 1882 the return per acre did not average more than 1½ cwt. on account of a perfect plague of aphides; while in 1859, which is about the best hop year of the century, the return was 13¼ cwt. per acre. The average yield during the last seventy-six years is about 6¾ cwt. per acre; not a very large return for the outlay. In 1839 a certain hop plantation in Kent of about 21½ acres, produced 15 cwt. per acre, and in the following year only 1 cwt. per acre.
These extraordinary variations in the production of hop gardens are caused by insects and the weather. Early in the year, when the vines appear well grown and sturdy, the hop-grower may with a light heart, perhaps, prophesy a good crop. In May a few aphides—winged females—are noticed, and in August the silvery brightness of the delicate bracts is blackened and spoilt by the filth of the lice—larvæ of the hop aphis. About September a mighty wind comes; poles are blown down in all directions, the ground is strewn with the cones blown from the vines, and branches are bruised, causing the cones on them to wither and decay before picking-time. Just as the hops are ripening two or three cold nights perhaps occur, which throw them back and materially reduce the value of the crop. Then they may be attacked with mildew, or even when all evils have in most part been avoided, picking-time has all but arrived, and the hop-grower is congratulating himself on his good fortune, a shower of hail may happen, stripping the vines and reducing the value of the crop by three-fourths.
Miss Ormerod, consulting entomologist to the Royal Agricultural Society, has given much study to, and thrown considerable light upon, the hop aphis. The course of the attack upon the hop she has discovered to be as follows:—The aphis first comes upon the hop in the spring in the form of wingless females (depositing young), which ascend the bine from the ground. The great attack, however, which usually occurs in the form of “fly” about the end of May, comes from damson and sloe bushes as well as from the hop; the hop aphis and the damson aphis being, in Miss Ormerod’s opinion, very slight varieties of one species, and so similar in habits that for all practical purposes of inquiry they may be considered one.
From experiments made on hop grounds in Hereford, the use of various applications round the hills in the late autumn or about the beginning of April, completely prevented attacks to the vines of those hills until the summer attack came on the wing. Paraffin in any dry material spread on the hills, proved serviceable both as a preventive {91} and a remedy, and petroleum and kerosine were also used with advantage. Among the methods of washing, the application of steam power opens up a possibility of carrying out these operations with rapidity and at less cost. When the fly is very bad, the common practice is, after the picking is over, to clear the land of bine and weeds and to place quicklime round the hills or plant centres.
When the hop is fully formed, shortly before picking, if the weather be hot and close, almost the whole crop may be destroyed in a few days. The aphides penetrate the hop and suck from the tender bracts the juice, some of which exudes; this, the moist weather retarding evaporation, produces decay at the point of puncture, and a black spot shows, technically called “mould.” The great enemies to the lice are the ladybirds, which devour them greedily, and a hop-grower would as soon destroy a ladybird as a herring fisherman a seagull.
It has been recently suggested that the suitability or not of soil for hop-growing, depends upon the presence or absence of sulphur, which is an essential ingredient of hops. There is more than one instance on record where hops treated with gypsum (sulphate of lime) were free from mould, while in adjoining gardens the hops not so treated suffered severely. The hops least liable to blight and mould contain the largest amount of sulphur. A curious fact has been proved in Germany by careful analysis. In plants attacked by the hop bug the proportion of sulphur is much greater in the healthy and unattacked leaves than in those infested with the bug. This subject hardly comes within the range of our work, and we merely mention it to bring it into notice among hop-growers, whom further experiments with gypsum may possibly benefit. It is obvious that as the chief attack is made by aphis on the wing, dressings put on the ground with a view to kill the aphides in the soil are of little avail, for from a neighbouring or even a distant garden where the hills have been not so treated, may come a flight of aphides causing desolation in their track. If, however, sulphur can be imported into the live plant, and such plants are untouched by the fly, it would seem that we are near a solution of this very vexed problem. We know of an instance where the hops on one side of a valley were totally destroyed by the fly, while on the other side they were untouched. The wind setting in one direction during the flight, had carried the fly over the sheltered side, and deposited them on the exposed side of the valley.
Not to mention extraordinary tithes in this portion of our subject would be a serious omission. Formerly our worthy pastors were paid {92} with a tenth of the actual produce of the land, now they receive what are in theory equivalent money payments. As orchards, market gardens, and hop gardens were deemed to yield much greater returns than other land, the tithe on them was fixed at a much greater rate than on pasture and arable land. While the tithe on these latter is but trifling, the tithe on the former is about thirty shillings per acre. When few foreign hops were imported, these very extraordinary tithes could be paid, but now they are a most serious, not to say unjust, tax on the hop-grower who in very bad years may not make thirty or even twenty shillings per acre. It is common knowledge that a great agitation is on foot to obtain their abolition, and there appears to be a very general feeling that no land ought in the future to become subject to extraordinary tithe by reason of any crop which may be grown on it. At present the extraordinary tithes are a check on production and the most advantageous cultivation of land. Being thus prejudicial to the welfare of the State, they should have been abolished long ago, and no doubt would have been, but for the circumstance that the immediate sufferers are comparatively few in number.
The hop gardens of Kent not only provide the brewer with the best hops, but, as each autumn comes round, afford to some thirty thousand or so of the poorer classes living in the densely-populated districts of the east of London a few weeks of country life. The East-Enders, indeed, look upon hop-picking in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex as their particular prerogative, and mix but little with the “home” pickers, who, however, are almost equal to them in numbers.
“When the plants are laden with beautiful bloom And the air breathes around us its rich perfume,”
the grower sends word to the pickers, most of whom have had their names down for a bin, or a basket, for weeks or even months previously. In Mid Kent “bins” are used. These consist of an oblong framework of wood supported on legs, and to which a piece of sackcloth is fastened. The bins are divided down the centres, so that two families may pick into one bin. At certain times in the day the hops in each bin are measured and the number of bushels credited to the pickers. In East Kent baskets are used; these contain distinct marks for each bushel, so that the labour of measuring is dispensed with. From the baskets the hops are emptied into sacks and carried to the oast house to be dried. This is a simple operation. The oast house is a square brick building with a chimney of large size in the centre of the roof. The hops are {93} laid on cloths stretched between beams. The necessary heat is obtained from a brick fireplace which is open at the top. After having been sufficiently baked, the hops are allowed to cool, and are then put into pockets, i.e., long sacks, stamped down as tightly as possible, and are ready for the market.
As in Chaucer’s time pilgrims wound their way through the garden of England, so now do pilgrims, but with different object, tramp along the dusty highway or shady lane into that beautiful country. In Chaucer’s time the monasteries provided food and shelter for the pilgrims; but now they in most part are content with the blue sky or spreading branch of tree as a roof, and hedge-row for a wall. If the weather be but reasonably fine, the life of these latter-day pilgrims is not a hard one, for the balmy country air, the soft turf and beautiful surroundings must seem to these poor creatures a kind of paradise after the dens of filth, disease, and darkness from which they have come.
Not pleasant company are these pilgrims. As a rule they are uncleanly, their habits coarse, their language foul, and their morality doubtful. Many persons in Kent prefer to lose several pounds rather than let their children go into the fields and associate with the mixed company from the East-End. Poor people! they are after all what their circumstances have made them; a sweep can hardly be blamed for having a black face. A few years since men, women, and children all slept together indiscriminately in barns and outhouses. Now, as regards sleeping accommodation, there have been changes for the better,
“And far and near With accent clear The hop-picker’s song salutes the glad ear: The old and the young Unite in the throng, And echo re-echoes their jocund song, The hop-picking time is a time of glee, So merrily, merrily now sing we: For the bloom of the hop is the secret spell Of the bright pale ale that we love so well; So gather it quickly with tender care, And off to the wagons the treasure bear.”
The high road from London to the hopfields of Kent presents a curious appearance immediately before the hop-picking season. A stranger might imagine that the poorer classes of a big city were flying {94} before an invading army. Grey-haired, decrepit old men and women are to be seen crawling painfully along, their stronger sons and daughters pressing on impatiently. Children by the dozens, some fresh and leaping for very joy at the green fields and sunshine, others crying from fatigue, for the road is long and dusty. Nearly all these people carry sacks or baskets, or bundles, and some even push hand carts laden with clothing, rags, and odds and ends. Most of these folk are careless, merry people, and beguile the way as did Chaucer’s pilgrims, with many a coarse jest, but here and there will be seen some hang-dog bloated-faced ruffian tramping doggedly along, a discontented weary woman dragging slowly a few yards in his rear, as likely as not carrying a half-starved sickly child in her shawl. Such as these cause the coming of the hop-pickers to be regarded with anything but satisfaction in country districts, and at such time householders are doubly careful to see that their windows and doors are properly barred. But the majority of the pickers are well-behaved according to their lights, and guilty at most of a little rough horseplay towards the solitary traveller or among themselves.
Towards evening the pickers cease their tramp, and take up their quarters for the night in woodland copse, or under hedge-row or sheltering bank. Baskets, sacks, and hand carts are unpacked, and here and there will be seen a whole family seated round a blazing wood fire, over which boils the family kettle. Others, less fortunate in having no family circle to join, betake themselves to more secluded quarters to munch the lump of bread of which their supper consists.
About half the pickers are taken into Kent by special trains, a larger number, as might be expected, returning that way. The secretaries of the South Eastern and London and Chatham Railway Companies have very kindly furnished us with a few figures on the subject. In 1882—the bad year for hops—the S.E.R. Company only carried 173 pickers to the fields, and 3,094 on the return journeys; but in previous years the numbers varied from 6,000 to 17,000 on the outgoing journey, and 9,000 to 19,000 on the return journey. Last year the L.C. & D.R. Company carried 1,785 pickers to the fields, and brought back 4,035.
But if the pickers are light-hearted and merry on the way to the fields, with empty pockets, what are they on their return, after work is over and wages paid? Everything is then the height of merriment, and of such an uproarious kind as the people of the East End delight in. Young men and girls, invigorated by their sojourn in the bracing country air, alike garland themselves with hops, and decorate themselves with gay ribbons. Laughing, dancing, and singing, they hurry {95} to the station, or along the road to London. Practical jokes are played by the score, the railway officials are distracted, the police look the other way. As train after train full of shouting people leaves the station, the crowd gradually becomes less thick. Night comes on, and many return to their barns, obliged to put off their return home for another day. In a few days this lively throng of humanity has disappeared; the hopfields, robbed of their bright crops, are again quiet; and the more nervous of the dwellers in Kent again breathe freely.
