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"Scissors to mend! to mend! to mend!" The monotonous calls of London hawkers are a strange mixture of sounds at one moment attractive, at another repelling; they are, perhaps, more like the cry of a bird in distress than anything else. Rhoda looked at her wood-chopper as the knife-grinder came nearer to the house, and as he passed beckoned him, and gave it to him. She made no remark.
And the Paris which was thus awaking with the first flashes of the gas was already full of the gaiety of enjoyment, already yielding to an unbridled appetite for whatsoever may be purchased. However, Pierre had a narrow escape from being knocked down. A flock of newspaper hawkers came out of a side street, and darted through the crowd shouting the titles of the evening journals.
What a noisy, smelly, picturesque city it was! The cries of the hawkers, the importunities of the guides, the venders and cabmen, the whining beggars; the clatter of horses and carriages and carts; strolling singers, goats with tinkling bells, the barking of outcast dogs, and the brawling and bawling of children, hundreds upon hundreds of children!
To look over the South Bridge and see the Cowgate below full of crying hawkers, is to view one rank of society from another in the twinkling of an eye. One night I went along the Cowgate after every one was abed but the policeman, and stopped by hazard before a tall land.
If birds could read, I think I should add to the notices I put up a little board containing the words: "No bottles. No hawkers, No greenfinches."
His placards smite the eye at the crossings of the streets; they return your glance at the shop-window, and confound your senses at every turn. "Old Ebony for the month," "Kit North again in the field," "A racy new number of Blackwood," such are the headings of newspaper puffs, and the bawlings of hawkers on the steps of Astor House.
There was a crowd in the Turkish Bazaar, but our smug friend led the way to an angle of the building where the hawkers were unusually busy, and I drew near enough to see that he was now looking covertly all about him, and for a little seemed at a loss. 'Kum-all-ong! Kume-mol-o-ng! Ku-m-m-m!
The hawkers and peddlers, I am assured, are still doing well, though, from some new arrangements respecting them made in 1789, it would be difficult to trace their proceedings in any satisfactory manner. When such is the vigor of our traffic in its minutest ramifications, we may be persuaded that the root and the trunk are sound.
As I was walking in my Chamber the Morning before I went last into the Country, I heard the Hawkers with great Vehemence crying about a Paper, entitled, The ninety nine Plagues of an empty Purse. I had indeed some Time before observed, that the Orators of Grub-street had dealt very much in Plagues.
Women are glue-makers, glove-makers, workers in gold and silver leaf, hair- weavers, hat and cap-makers, hose-weavers, workers in India-rubber, paper- hangers, physicians, picklers and preservers, saddlers and harness-makers, shoe-makers, soda-room keepers, snuff and cigar-makers, stock and suspender-makers, truss-makers, typers and stereotypers, umbrella-makers, upholsterers, card-makers, photographers, house and sign-painters, fruit- hawkers, button-makers, tobacco-packers, paper-box makers, embroiderers, and fur-sewers."
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