From the neighbourhood of the hop fields comes news of a distressing nature.  The bright outburst of the last two days has sent many hundreds of hoppers into Kent, who will have to wait till the fields are ready for them.  At Dover the number of vagrants in the workhouse is treble the number there last year at this time, and in other towns the lateness of the season is responsible for a large increase in the number of casuals.

To cap their wretchedness, when at last the picking had begun, hops and hoppers were well-nigh swept away by a frightful storm of wind, rain, and hail.  The hops were stripped clean from the poles and pounded into the earth, while the hoppers, seeking shelter from the stinging hail, were close to drowning in their huts and camps on the low-lying ground.  Their condition after the storm was pitiable, their state of vagrancy more pronounced than ever; for, poor crop that it was, its destruction had taken away the chance of earning a few pennies, and nothing remained for thousands of them but to “pad the hoof” back to London.

“We ayn’t crossin’-sweepers,” they said, turning away from the ground, carpeted ankle-deep with hops.

Those that remained grumbled savagely among the half-stripped poles at the seven bushels for a shilling—­a rate paid in good seasons when the hops are in prime condition, and a rate likewise paid in bad seasons by the growers because they cannot afford more.

I passed through Teston and East and West Farleigh shortly after the storm, and listened to the grumbling of the hoppers and saw the hops rotting on the ground.  At the hothouses of Barham Court, thirty thousand panes of glass had been broken by the hail, while peaches, plums, pears, apples, rhubarb, cabbages, mangolds, everything, had been pounded to pieces and torn to shreds.

All of which was too bad for the owners, certainly; but at the worst, not one of them, for one meal, would have to go short of food or drink.  Yet it was to them that the newspapers devoted columns of sympathy, their pecuniary losses being detailed at harrowing length.  “Mr. Herbert L—–­ calculates his loss at 8000 pounds;” “Mr. F—–­, of brewery fame, who rents all the land in this parish, loses 10,000 pounds;” and “Mr. L—–­, the Wateringbury brewer, brother to Mr. Herbert L—–­, is another heavy loser.”  As for the hoppers, they did not count.  Yet I venture to assert that the several almost-square meals lost by underfed William Buggles, and underfed Mrs. Buggles, and the underfed Buggles kiddies, was a greater tragedy than the 10,000 pounds lost by Mr. F—–.  And in addition, underfed William Buggles’ tragedy might be multiplied by thousands where Mr. F—–­’s could not be multiplied by five.

To see how William Buggles and his kind fared, I donned my seafaring togs and started out to get a job.  With me was a young East London cobbler, Bert, who had yielded to the lure of adventure and joined me for the trip.  Acting on my advice, he had brought his “worst rags,” and as we hiked up the London road out of Maidstone he was worrying greatly for fear we had come too ill-dressed for the business.