By Ouve Dex London, June 17. "There were no King and Queen; the weather was chilly, cloudy, and on the last day pouring with' rain—some one said, apropos of the huge puddles all over the ground, that the "Lambeth Walk" now. had a parallel in. the "Ascot hop"; the favourites were simply nowhere, three "odds on" animals being beaten: this always, costs the West End a lot of money; and the younger generation, perhaps prudent-Jy, perhaps realizing that there would bbe no real show, turned up mostly in the simplest {rocks. The crowd was halt the usual number and a friend who lives in Ascot tells me that, hav-Ing to go to a cocktail parly the second evening about six o'clock, he found the road outside the course practically deserted.
All of which shows that the Facing the last thing most people go to Ascot for, and that when the King and Queen aren't where they usually fare, other people aren't either, if you et' my meaning.
Apropos of that last day of puddles, Ascot might have been worse off. At Trowbridge in Wiltshire there was a cloud-burst and from it descended, hot the proverbial eats and dogs, but frogs by myriads, the plague of Egypt. The explanation is a waterspout, caused by a small whirlwind, which scoops up the water of a pond with all that is therein, Such occurrences fire not uncommon in France, but I don't remember one in England. Just think of an Ascot hat unexpectedly adorned with small green frogs.
With all these virtues his devotion to his wife, Eleanor of Castile, must surely be "remembered. How she sucked the poison from his wounded arm. is well-known, and when she died in Lincolnshire he hastened back from the Scottish border transport her body to London, an? wherever it rested at night there he caused @ great memorial eross to be Duilt.. There were 12 In all of these, of which three still stand, at Gedington near' Kettering; Queen's Cross near Northampton, and Wal-tham Cross. The one at Charing Cross is a modern reproduction, but perhaps the name of the place com memorate her more anciently, for "Charing" is believed to be a corrupt tion of "chore reine" as Edward always called his Queen. Eleanor lies ina lovely tomb. in' Westminister Abbey, with an effigy of herself in bronze, for which her husband paid the, for those days, enormous sum of £1,100. No. wife has ever had a more wholly devoted husband.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.