The Sutton and Reigate route to Brighton, instead of branching off along the Brixton Road, pursues a straight undeviating course down the Clapham Road, through Balham and Upper and Lower Tooting, where it turns sharply to the left at the Broadway, and in half a mile right again, at Amen Corner. Thence it goes, by Figg's Marsh and Mitcham, to Sutton. [Sidenote: MITCHAM COMMON] It is not before Mitcham is reached that, in these latter days, the pilgrim is conscious of travelling the road to anywhere at all. It is all modern "street"--and streets, to this commentator at least, have a strong resemblance to rows of dog-kennels. They are places where citizens live on the chain. They lack the charm of obviously leading elsewhere: and even although electric tramcars speed multitudinously along them, to some near or distant terminus, they do but arrive there at other streets. Mitcham is at present beyond these brick and mortar tentacles, and is grouped not unpicturesquely about a village green and along the road to the Wandle. Pleasant, ruddy-faced seventeenth and eighteenth-century mansions look upon that green, notable in the early days of Surrey cricket; and away at the further end of it is the vast flat of Mitcham Common, that dreary, long-drawn expanse which is at once the best illustration of eternity and of a Shakespearian "blasted heath" that can readily be thought of. "Mitcham lavender" brings fragrant memories, and indeed the only thing that serves to render the weary length of Mitcham Common at all endurable is the scent of it, borne on the breeze from the distillery, midway across: the distillery that no one would remember to be Jakson's, except for the eccentricity of spelling the name. This by the way; for one does not cross Mitcham Common to reach Sutton. But there is, altogether, a sweet savour pervading Mitcham, a scent of flowers that will not be spoiled even by the linoleum works, which are apt to be offensive; for Mitcham is still a place where those sweet-smelling and other "economic" plants, lavender, mint, chamomile, aniseed, peppermint, rosemary, and liquorice, are grown for distillation. The place owes this distinction to no mere chance, but to its peculiar black mould, found to be exceptionally suited to this culture. Folk-rhymes are often uncomplimentary, and that which praises Sutton for its mutton and Cheam for juicy beef, is more severe than one cares to quote on Epsom; and, altogether ignoring the mingled fragrances of Mitcham, declares it the place "for a thief." We need not, however, take the matter seriously: the rhymester was only at his wit's end for a rhyme to "beef." Mitcham station, beside the road, is a curious example of what a railway company can do in its rare moments of economy; for it is an early nineteenth-century villa converted to railway purposes by the process of cutting a hole through the centre. It is a sore puzzle to a stranger in a hurry. [Sidenote: SUTTON]