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Updated: September 20, 2025
While there was yet an hour or two to wane before the autumn sunset, the loiterer outside town-gate and drawbridge, and postern and double-ditch, would see the last white-hooded cart lessening in the avenue of lengthening shadows of trees, or the last country boat, paddled by the last market-woman on her way home, showing black upon the reddening, long, low, narrow dike between him and the mill; and as the paddle-parted scum and weed closed over the boat's track, he might be comfortably sure that its sluggish rest would be troubled no more until next market-day.
The "munengana,"or machila-man, is active in offering his light cane palanquin, and he chaffs the "mean white" who is compelled to walk, bitterly as did the sedan-chairmen of Bath before the days of Beau Nash. Of course the Quitandeira, or market-woman, holds her own. The rest of the street population seems to consist of negro "infantry" and black Portuguese pigs, gaunt and long- legged.
A fat market-woman gave the lad a cake, and another one gave him two oranges, and still another market-woman, fatter than the rest, blew her nose violently on her check apron and said it was too bad a boy like that didn't have a mother.
We see persons spending dollar after dollar foolishly one hour, and in the next trying to save a five penny piece off of a wood-sawyer, coal-heaver, or market-woman. Such things are disgraceful, if not dishonest. "O DEAR!" said I to Mr. Smith one morning, as we arose from the breakfast-table, at which we had been partaking of rather a badly-cooked meal, "more trouble in prospect."
My mother was a great manager, and she always said, 'There is but one way: be your own market-woman, and pay on the spot; never let the tradesmen get you on their books, or, what with false weight, double charges, and the things your servants order that never enter the house, you lose more than a hundred a year by cheating."
William replied that he had no real friends but old Thomas Burton the watchman, and his wife. Mrs. Bradley, the market-woman, had been very kind to him too, but it was the old watchman who took him to church, and when he was troubled about the purse, had taken it to the right owner. The sounds of swift footsteps were now heard, and a bright-looking boy of fourteen came bustling in at the door.
And when employed in military bands why, a horse looks a complete fool between a couple of these gigantic basins, each with its long tag-rag of unmeaning velvet, beplastered and bedizened with lace and gold, streaming from it; and the unlucky performer perched between them, exactly like an old market-woman, bolstered up between a brace of paniers or milk-pails; any thing but a fierce dragoon, or most chivalrous hussar.
Still, it was useless denying it, the car looked, if not like a market-woman, at least like a disreputable old tramp of the motor world, with its wreaths of luggage looped on anyhow, as if it were a string of giant sausages; and I hated the Prince not only for his impertinent pleasure in our plight, but for the proud magnificence of his car, which gained new lustre in the disgrace of ours.
Readers cannot fail to have remarked that what an author tells us of the beauty or the charm of his creatures goes for nought; that we know instantly better; that the heroine cannot open her mouth but what, all in a moment, the fine phrases of preparation fall from round her like the robes from Cinderella, and she stands before us, self-betrayed, as a poor, ugly, sickly wench, or perhaps a strapping market-woman.
There was Ginevra being married in a brown dress! and to that horrid lad, who called himself a baronet, and hobnobbed with a low market-woman! But, alas! just as she was recovering her presence of mind, Mr. Sclater pronounced them husband and wife! She gave a shriek, and cried out, "I forbid the banns," at which the company, bride and bridegroom included, broke into "a loud smile."
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