Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 24, 2025
We walk briskly up the walled road of the piano, striking at the overhanging golden fruit with our staves; greeting the orange-girls who come down the side lanes; chaffing with the drivers, the beggars, the old women who sit in the sun; looking into the open doors of houses and shops upon women weaving, boys and girls slicing up heaps of oranges, upon the makers of macaroni, the sellers of sour wine, the merry shoemakers, whose little dens are centers of gossip here, as in all the East: the whole life of these people is open and social; to be on the street is to be at home.
The deck is literally jammed with every variety of the pedestrian population red-breasted soldiers from the barracks, glazed-hatted policemen from the station, Irish labourers and their wives, errand-boys with notes and packages, orange-girls with empty baskets, working-men out for a mouthful of air, and idle boys out for a 'spree' men with burdens to carry, and men with hardly a rag to cover them; unctuous Jews, jabbering Frenchmen, and drowsy-looking Germans on they flock, squeezing through the gangway, or clambering over the bulwarks, while the little vessel rolls and lurches till the water laves the planks on which you stand.
There were some large booths with tables placed the whole length, at which sat men and women drinking and smoking pipes; orange-girls, a great many, selling the worst possible oranges, which had evidently been boiled to give them a show of freshness.
Even the palpitations of the sail were audible, the cadence of the oars, conversation, song, the laughter of the merry flower and orange-girls of Marseilles, those true daughters of the gulf, so passionately fond of the wave, and devoted to the luxury of wild sports with their native element were heard.
There were walkers and water-carriers, with goat-skins full on their back; and fruit-sellers and orange-girls; and ourselves and others driving at full gallop, regardless of all the Copts, Abyssinians, Greeks, Turks, Parsees, Nubians, and Jews, which crowded the path.
"Why, a Miss." "A Miss," said the Prince of Wales, "why are not all girls Misses?" "Oh! but a particular sort of Miss a Miss that sells oranges." Mr. Cunningham in a note on this says: 'Orange-girls at theatres were invariably courtesans. Governor was the term commonly given to a tutor, especially a travelling tutor.
There was a sentimental housemaid in the establishment who bought the weekly penny papers, and subscribed to a circulating library, from which she got greasy volumes containing stories of marquises and dukes who invariably fell in love with orange-girls and gypsies and servant-maids, and made them the proud brides of coronets; and Sara often did parts of this maid's work so that she might earn the privilege of reading these romantic histories.
And I pretty soon saw her out of the house, though NOT IN TIME; for the infatuated Bishop had already given her a cheque for a sum which I cannot bring myself to tell you, for the Funds of the Destitute Orange-Girls. Not a penny of it will they ever see; nor do I approve of such ostentatious alms in any case. Yours in haste, P.S. I have heard from Lady Courtney all her history. It is ABOMINABLE.
Finally, along the curbs of the footways, lost in the defile of the carriage traffic which grazes their wandering path, the orange-girls complete this peripatetic commerce, heaping up the sun-coloured fruit beneath their lanterns of red paper, crying "La Valence" amid the fog, the tumult, the excessive haste which Paris displays at the ending of its year.
There were some large booths with tables placed the whole length, at which sat men and women drinking and smoking pipes; orange-girls, a great many, selling the worst possible oranges, which had evidently been boiled to give them a show of freshness.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking