'Holy Moses!' 'Run and lock the park gates, Jamie!' and like exclamations heralded our way. Morris with his grand, elderly, seafaring mien, attracted the brunt of the waggery. One urchin fronted him with a respectful gesture. 'You'll find one just over the way, sir,' he said solicitously. 'Find what, my little man?' asked Morris unsuspectingly. 'A hairdresser, sir'—and a chime of laughter greeted the sally, while a little girl seated on the kerb with an infant in her arms piped out, 'Dinna mind them, mister, they're jist trying tae mak' a fool o' ye.' A troop of youngsters fell into line behind us, chanting improvised doggerel:—
'Sailor, sailor; sou'west!
Dance a jig in the crow's nest!'
Morris, who was accustomed to the guffaw of juvenile plebeians in the lower quarters of London, took this sportiveness wholly in good part, occasionally returning their banter con amore, much to the little larrikins' delight. He remarked on the exceeding cleverness, and often ingenious wit, displayed by children when in play together, especially in the poorer districts where they were freer from the tutelage of grown-ups, and had developed clan or community traditions of their own. 'But the faculty soon withers,' he added; 'the poor things become dull and vacant-minded once they grow out of childhood and lose the sap of the common stem. The natural well-springs of their imagination become soiled and run dry.'
Jail Square, as the wide pavement opening in front of Glasgow Green is called, is, or was, the most popular public forum in Scotland, and I suppose in Great Britain. Every week-night and all Sunday the Square is thronged by groups of men, mostly of the working class, listening eagerly to the debates on topics of religion and politics—in those days chiefly Catholicism versus Protestantism, Calvinism, Atheism, Spiritualism, Home Rule, Henry Georgeism, Republicanism, and Socialism. A portion of the space
