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 favourite 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 marry, drinking whisky, wine, and sherry, We'll all be merry on Coronation Day." The rain is pouring down.

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, 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 bloomin' 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 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 them was no more discussion.
As night drew on, the city became a blaze of light.