I HAVE A RIGHT.
what does their being detained matter to me; I paid for my ticket and I've a right to be taken on.'
'Certainly,' said the other; 'no man has a right to interfere with my business for the sake of his pleasure —such new-fangled notions!—What's the good of a day's pleasure to the working classes?'
'They have it so seldom,' my brother suggested, 'that they have plenty of time to consider that question between one day's pleasure and the next.'
'Horrid bore, these excursion trains!' repeated the first speaker; 'filling the country with holiday folk; what do they want with holidays—much better stop at home, and work, and earn a little more. What's the good of sending out a swarm of pale-faced, knock-knee'd London artisans, and gaping children, that don't know a kite from a jackdaw? If you must give 'em a treat, let it be a good dinner. Country air, indeed! I don't find London unhealthy; and I spend three or four months in it every year.'
'To be sure,' echoed his companion, 'these London clergy and ministers ought to know better than to spread such sentimental nonsense among the people—duty comes before pleasure, doesn't it? Why, a man had the assurance to write to me—a perfect stranger—to know whether I'd open my park for a shoal of his cockney parishioners to dine and drink tea in! He knew it was closed, forsooth, but he hoped for once, and in the cause of philanthropy, I'd open it. I should like to know where my young coveys would be when every inch in my wood had been overrun, and all the bracken trod down in the cause of philanthropy? No, I wrote him a piece of
