On Bonfire Day, as Britons should,
  They heaped up sticks, and turf, and wood;
  And lighted Bonfires bright and hot,
  In memory of the Popish Plot!

We were ourselves greatly interested in November 5th, which was now due to arrive in three days’ time; not because some of our ancestors had been adherents to the Roman Catholic Faith, nor because of the massacres, for in that respect we thought one side was quite as bad as the other; but because it happened to be my birthday, and some of our earliest and happiest associations were connected with that day.  I could remember the time when a candle was placed in every available window-pane at home on November 5th, and when I saw the glare of the big bonfire outside and the pin-wheels, the rip-raps, and small fireworks, and heard the church bells ringing merrily, and the sound of the guns firing, I naturally thought as a child that all these tokens of rejoicing were there because it was my birthday.  Then the children from the village came! first one small group and then another; these were the “Soulers,” or “Soul-Cakers,” who ought to have appeared, according to history, on All Souls’ Day; they were generally satisfied with apples or pears, or with coppers.  The most mysterious visitor was the horse’s head, or hobby horse, which came without its body or legs, but could make a noise just like the neighing of a horse, and could also open its mouth so wide that a glass filled with beer could pass down its throat.  To complete the illusion we could hear its jaws, which were filled with very large teeth, close together with a crack, and although the glass was returned in some way or other, we never saw the beer again.  The horse’s head was accompanied by a lot of men known as Mummers, dressed in all sorts of queer clothes, who acted a short play, but the only words I could remember were, “King George, King George, thou hast killed my only son!” and at that point one of the actors fell on the grass as if he were dead.  But these were reveries of the past; when the spell broke I found myself walking with my brother in the dark alongside the grounds of Combe Abbey, the only lights we could see being some in the park, which might have been those from the abbey itself.  We were expecting to come upon a private menagerie which was supposed to exist somewhere in the park, and we had prepared ourselves for the roars of the lions seeking their prey as they heard our footsteps on the road, or for the horrid groans of other wild animals; but beyond a few minor noises, which we could not recognise, all was quiet, and passing the small village of Binley we soon arrived at Coventry, where we stayed for the night at an ancient hostelry near the centre of the town.