On attaining the age of eight, or thereabout, children fly away from the
Gardens, and never come back. When next you meet them they are ladies
and gentlemen holding up their umbrellas to hail a hansom.
Where the girls go to I know not, to some private place, I suppose, to
put up their hair, but the boys have gone to Pilkington's. He is a man
with a cane. You may not go to Pilkington's in knickerbockers made
by your mother, make she ever so artfully. They must be real
knickerbockers. It is his stern rule. Hence the fearful fascination of
Pilkington's.
He may be conceived as one who, baiting his hook with real
knickerbockers, fishes all day in the Gardens, which are to him but a
pool swarming with small fry.
Abhorred shade! I know not what manner of man thou art in the flesh,
sir, but figure thee bearded and blackavised, and of a lean tortuous
habit of body, that moves ever with a swish. Every morning, I swear,
thou readest avidly the list of male births in thy paper, and then are
thy hands rubbed gloatingly the one upon the other. 'Tis fear of thee
and thy gown and thy cane, which are part of thee, that makes the
fairies to hide by day; wert thou to linger but once among their haunts
between the hours of Lock-out and Open Gates there would be left not one
single gentle place in all the Gardens. The little people would flit.
How much wiser they than the small boys who swim glamoured to thy crafty
hook. Thou devastator of the Gardens, I know thee, Pilkington.