Explore "Society's Next Craze" by Thomas Anstey Guthrie on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
_It is the summer of 189. The scene is a road skirting Victoria Park, Bethnal Green, which Society's leaders have recently discovered and appointed as the rendez-vous for the Season, and where it is now the correct thing for all really smart people to indulge, between certain prescribed hours, in sports and pastimes that have hitherto been more characteristic of the masses than the classes. The only permissible mount now is the donkey, which must be ridden close to the tail, and referred to as a "moke. " A crowd of well-turned-out spectators arrives from the West End every morning about eleven to watch the brilliant parade of "Mokestrians" (as the Society journalist will already have decided to call them). Some drive slowly up and down on coster-barrows, attended by cockaded and disgusted grooms. About twelve, they break up into light luncheon parties; after which they play democratic games for half an hour or so, and drive home on drags._
MR. WOODBY-INNETT (_to the DONKEY PROPRIETOR_). Kept a moke for me? I told you I should be wantin' one every mornin' now.