This I cannot
succeed in doing, and it is better so. I much prefer to believe that all
this pomp, and vanity, and show, and mumbo-jumbo foolery has come from
fairyland, than to believe it the performance of sane and sensible people
who have mastered matter and solved the secrets of the stars.
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 pagent 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 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.
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