A short way further along I come across a boy gathering palm. He is a town
boy, and has come all the way from Whitechapel thus early. He has already
gathered a great bundle--worth five shillings to him, he says. This same
palm will to-morrow be distributed over London, and those who buy sprigs
of it by the Bank will know nothing of the blue-eyed boy who gathered it,
and the murmuring river by which it grew. And the lad, once more lost in
some squalid court, will be a sort of Sir John Mandeville to his
companions--a Sir John Mandeville of the fields, with their water-rats,
their birds' eggs, and many other wonders. And one can imagine him saying,
'And the sparrows there fly right up into the sun, and sing like angels!'
But he won't get his comrades to believe _that_.