LONDON AT LEISURE
up going into an upper loft through a trap-door. This loft was the "Cave of Harmony" where, in the light of brilliant gas jets were held the contests of the piping chaffinches. There, taking the gas jets for a fiercer sun, the little birds sang shrilly and furiously one against another, the attentive crowd of faces around them, thrown into deep shadows and strong lights, hard featured and intense, with every eye fixed upon the small and straining singer, fingers ticking off turns in the song and a silence broken by no shuffling of feet and no clearing of throats.
So, having scored his "marks", our friend would go slowly and soberly home; set another pailful of treacle beer to brew against next Sunday morning, and put himself quietly to bed.
Thus his life was perfectly regular and calm; hard muscular work giving place to sober amusement, dashed once a week with that intense leisure of lying still, looking at the ceiling and thinking nothing. On off days, bank holidays and the like, he would take his cages, wrapped up, under his arm, out into Epping Forest. For these chaffinch fanciers have a notion—no doubt it is a true one—that unless their captive birds refresh their memory of the wild song by chanting against free chaffinches in the woods or parks, they will lose the brilliance of their note, and finally mope and die. There are in London many thousands of men like this.
Chaffinches, bullfinches, prize bantams, prize rabbits, whippets, bull terriers, canaries, and even pigs occupy
125
