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CHAPTER III - A ROAMING COMMISSION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 August 2010

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Summary

Had I sufficient notes of it, a talk I had with a London 'bus-driver might, not inappropriately, have a place here; not only because Bettesworth, being told of it, was moved to recall further details of his own earlier biography, but also because the 'bus-man himself—a gravely gossipping fellow, “not thirty yet,” he said—seemed to be enjoying the same experiences that Bettesworth had lived through before the other was born. In truth, I was startled by the similarity between the two men. Save for the dialect, it might have been Bettesworth's self, telling of his horse that had grown restive in the Strand, of the old lady who pleaded with him not to whip the poor thing, and of his suggestion that she had better sit further back if her feelings were hurt, because in the Strand a horse cannot be allowed to give trouble. A Hampshire man was the 'bus-driver; like Bettesworth, he had begun life very early, working about near home until a craze for “rambling” took him. He had rambled to London; then back into Hampshire; and now once more had been in London nearly ten years, but supposed that some day he should make a change again, seeing that he was “only at the beginning of his life.”

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Chapter
Information
The Bettesworth Book
Talks with a Surrey Peasant
, pp. 25 - 34
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009
First published in: 1901

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