In the public square at Boulton, gathered about the city-hall, where one would suppose for the sake of civic dignity no unseemly spectacle would be permitted, was gathered all the paraphernalia of a shabby, eighth-rate circus--red wagons, wild animal and domestic horse tents, the moderate-sized main tent, the side show, the fat woman’s private wagon, a cage and the like. I never saw so queer a scene. The whole square was crowded with tents, great and small; but there was little going on, for a drizzling rain was in progress. Can human dullness sink lower? I asked myself, feeling that the civic heart of things was being profaned. Could utmost drabbiness out-drab this? I doubted it. Why should the aldermen permit it? Yet I have no doubt this situation appealed exactly to the imagination of the working population. I can conceive that it would be about the only thing that would. It was just raw and cheap and homely enough to do it. I left with pleasure. When I came into Oldham on a tram-car from Rochdale, it was with my head swimming from the number of mills I had seen. I have described the kind--all new. But I did not lose them here. It was the luncheon hour and I was beginning to grow hungry. As I walked along dull streets I noticed several small eating-places labeled “fish, chip, and pea restaurant” and “tripe, trotters, and cow-heels restaurant,” which astonished me greatly--really astonished me. I had seen only one such before in my life and that was this same morning in Middleton--a “fish, chip, and pea restaurant”; but I did not get the point sufficiently clearly to make a note of it. The one that I encountered this afternoon had a sign in the window which stated that unquestionably its chips were the best to be procured anywhere and very nourishing. A plate of them standing close by made it perfectly plain that potato chips were meant. No recommendation was given to either the fish or the peas. I pondered over this, thinking that such restaurants must be due to the poverty of the people and that meat being very dear, these three articles of diet were substituted. Here in Oldham, however, I saw that several of these restaurants stood in very central places where the rents should be reasonably high and the traffic brisk. It looked as though they were popular for some other reason. I asked a policeman. “What is a ‘fish, chip, and pea’ restaurant?” I asked. “Well, to tell you the truth,” he said, “it’s a place where a man who’s getting over a spree goes to eat. Those things are good for the stomach.” I pondered over this curiously. There were four such restaurants in the immediate vicinity, to say nothing of the one labeled “tripe, trotters, and cow-heels,” which astonished me even more. “And what’s that for?” I asked of the same officer. “The same thing. A man who’s been drinking eats those things.”