Princes and princelings, dukes, duchesses, and all manner of coroneted folk of the royal train are flashing past; more warriors, and lackeys, and conquered peoples, and the pageant is over.I drift with the crowd out of the square into a tangle of narrow streets, where the public houses are a-roar with drunkenness, men, women, and children mixed together in colossal debauch.And on every side is rising the favorite song of the Coronation:
Oh! on Coronation Day, on Coronation Day, We'll have a spree, a jubilee, and shout, Hip, hip, hooray, For we'll all be merry, drinking whiskey, wine, and sherry.
We'll be merry on Coronation Day.
The rain is pouring down in torrents.Up the street come troops of the auxiliaries, black Africans and yellow Asiatics, beturbaned and befezed, and coolies swinging along with machine guns and mountain batteries on their heads, and the bare feet of all, in quick rhythm, going slish, slish, through the pavement mud.The public houses empty by magic, and the swarthy allegiants are cheered by their British brothers, who return at once to the carouse.
'And how did you like the procession, mate?' I asked an old man on a bench in Green Park.
''Ow did I like it? A bloody good chawnce, sez I to myself, for a sleep, wi' all the coppers aw'y, so I turned into the corner there, along wi' fifty others.But I couldn't sleep, a-lyin' there 'ungry an'
thinkin' 'ow I'd worked all the years o' my life an' now 'ad no plyce to rest my 'ead; an' the music comin' to me, an' the cheers an' cannon, till I got almost a hanarchist an' wanted to blow out the brains o' the Lord Chamberlain.'
Why the Lord Chamberlain, I could not precisely see, nor could he, but that was the way he felt, he said conclusively, and there was no more discussion.