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Noo, I'm a modest man, and it's no for me to be tellin' them that feel as he did what it is, maybe, they don't see. 'Deed, and I'm no sure I know mysel'. But here's a bit o' talk I heard between two costers as I was leavin' Gatti's that first nicht. "Hi, Alf, wot' jer fink o' that Scotch bloke?" one of them asked his mate. The other began to laugh. "Blow me, 'Ennery, d'ye twig what 'e meant?
It was nine o'clock by this time, and he was in the Whitechapel road, going along with a motley troop of Jews, Polish Jews, Germans, German Jews, and all the many tribes of Cockneydom. Two costers behind him were talking and laughing. "Lor' blesh you, it's jest abart enneff to myke a corpse laugh." "Ain't it? An acquyntince uv mine d'ye know Jow 'Awkins?
The darkened costers are interesting as studies in animal life; but the more pretentious persons whose humour reaches its highest flight in an indecent story, and whose wit consists in calling someone else a liar how petty they are, and how fruitless is their friendship!
'Yes, dear, says Charley; 'an' another scanlous thing is, that I can't sell 'em for no less. Charley is the most affectionate of costers, and is a general favourite with the abigails of the terrace.
They are conservative, also, like all the poor, and prefer old acquaintances to new; and the costers and sellers of all sorts realize this, and seldom go beyond an established list.
Caldew threaded his way through the unwashed population of that centre, and turned into a side street where a swarm of draggle-tailed women were chaffering for decaying greens heaped on costers' stalls in the middle of the road. He turned again into a narrower street running off this street market, and stopped when he got to the end of it.
I mind a famous actor who was with me once when I was taking a walk in London, and a dozen costers, recognizing me, wished me good luck it was just before I was tae mak' my first visit to America. It was "Good luck, Harry," and "God bless you, Harry!" frae them. 'Deed, and it warmed the cockles of my heart to hear them! But my friend was quite shocked.
A drunken sailor stormed from between swing doors and tacked tumultuously down the street: the factory chimney belching smoke became a swaying mast. The costers round about me shouted "Ay, ay, sir. 'Ready, ay, ready." I was Christopher Columbus, Drake, Nelson, rolled into one. Spurning the presumption of modern geographers, I discovered new continents. I defeated the French those useful French!
In all these essential and traditional regards the assembled Innocents were as poignantly disappointing as the costers of London had proved themselves. According to all the printed information on the subject the London coster wears clothes covered up with pearl buttons and spends his time swapping ready repartee with his Donah or his Dinah.
It was there that the traditional sports of the road began. A drag, with a band of exquisites armed with pea-shooters, peppering on costers who were getting angry, and threatening to drive over the leaders. A brake with two poles erected, and hanging on a string quite a line of miniature chamber-pots. A horse, with his fore-legs clothed in a pair of lady's drawers.
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