For one thing the Park itself was almost within a stone's throw of the Duke of Wellington; and in Josiah's opinion its sole merit was its contiguity to that famous public house. Personally he despised Jubilee Park and the class of persons who frequented it--they were a common lot--but now he had taken rank as the great man of this particular neighborhood, wherein he had been born and had sown the seeds of his fortune, it did him no harm in his own esteem or in that of the people who had known him in humbler days, once a year to savor his preëminence.
Tuesday, August the Fourth, was one of the hottest days within the memory of Blackhampton. And in that low-lying, over-populated area of which Jubilee Park was the center it seemed hotter than anywhere else. Being the day after Bank Holiday, a large section of the community "had taken another day off," therefore several thousand persons of all ages and both sexes assembled on the brown bare grass in the course of the afternoon.
To say that the bulk of these had been attracted to those shadeless precincts by a display of roses would be too polite a compliment. The Blackhampton Prize Brass Band was the undoubted magnet of the many. Then there were tea al fresco for the ladies, a baby show and a beauty competition, beer and bowls for the gentlemen, dancing to follow and also fireworks. When the Show was considered in all its aspects, the roses only appealed to a small minority; the roses in fact were hardly more than a pretext for a local saturnalia, but in the middle of the sward was a large tent wherein the competing blooms were displayed. Close by was a tent considerably less in size if intrinsically the more imposing, to which a square piece of cardboard was attached by a blue ribbon. It bore the legend "President and Committee."
At the entrance to this smaller tent a number of important looking but perspiring gentlemen were seated in a semicircle on garden chairs. And in the center of these, with rather the air of Jupiter among his satellites, was Mr. Josiah Munt. Several members of the committee, all badged and rosetted as they were, had removed their coats out of deference to the thermometer, but the President was not of these. Under the famous white pot hat, which in the southeastern district of his native city was as famous as the Gladstone collar and the Chamberlain eyeglass, was artfully disposed a cool cabbage leaf, and over all was a large white sun umbrella.