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The one is a cabinet de decrotteur, where the art of blacking shoes is carried to a pitch of perfection hitherto unknown in this country.
"I told them I wouldn't have tea till they came. They're gone to see a protégée of Clotilda's, who lives down a Court. It's not very far off; under a mile, I should think. We saw him in the street, coming from the railway-station. He looked a nice boy. That is to say, he would have looked nice, only he and his friends had all been blacking their faces with burnt cork." "What a lark!
The Gardenia, with its strongly scented blossom and evergreen leaves, made a capital hedge. Great bushes of the Hybiscus, scarlet and buff, glowed in the sun they were called shoe-flowers, for they were used instead of blacking to polish our shoes. The pink one-hundred-leaved rose grew freely, and blossomed all the year round.
Knives and forks you will discover in plenty; blacking brushes you will put your hand upon in every drawer; of emery paper, did one require it, there are reams; but it is a point with every housekeeper that the spoons be hidden in a different place each night. If anybody excepting herself can find them in the morning, it is a slur upon her.
From tooth-powder to tea-trays from spring-mattrasses to fictitious mineral waters from French blacking to the Widow Welch’s Pills all have their separate votaries; and it would be difficult to conceive any real or imaginary want unsupplied in this prolific age of contrivance.
He had been squatting somewhere in the gloom, and had been roused by Heron's rough command. He slouched forward now still carrying a boot in one hand and a blacking brush in the other. "Take this lanthorn, then," said the chief agent with a snarl directed at the sleeping concierge, "and come along. Why are you still here?" he added, as if in after-thought.
"Want to borrow?" he said, in the careless tone of one who might have supposed that the blacking of his boots was an every-day matter to this boy. "I always keep my own; it is cheaper than to depend on the street boys." Dirk said nothing at all, but reached forth his hand, and took the offered tools, and the hint which came with them.
Bobbie brought a shoe brush and a can of blacking, and Ritter brought a hair brush and a comb. Andy brought needles and khaki-colored thread. These things were laid quietly in the patrol's locker. Nobody said anything about the walls. By and by Tim arrived. He looked around and his face became red. Don gave him a quick glance.
Chaps who did it didn't clearly know.... What I want to know is, in the Middle Ages, did they do anything for Housemaid's Knee? What did they put in their hot baths after jousting, and was the Black Prince you know the Black Prince was he enameled or painted, or what? I think myself, black-leaded very likely like pipe-clay but DID they use blacking so early?"
Not less earnestly than benevolently do our quack doctors implore us to beware of spurious articles; Day and Martin exhort us not to take our polish from counterfeit blacking: every advertiser beseeches the "pensive public" to be upon its guard against supposititious articles all, in short, is knavery, juggling, cheating, and deception. Ibid.
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