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Was she growing tired of sorrow? After a minute he said, "Ah, you don't know what it is to be a convalescent and lie for months in a darkened room listening to the hand-organ man and the scissors-grinder, and the fellow that goes through the street hallooing 'Cash paid for rags! It's like having a new body to get the use of your limbs again and come out into the sunshine."
A fierce quarrel broke out, which was increased by the two guardsmen, who took sides with one of the loungers, and by the scissors-grinder, who was equally hot upon the other side. A blow was struck, and in an instant the lady, who had stepped from her carriage, was the centre of a little knot of flushed and struggling men, who struck savagely at each other with their fists and sticks.
One hears all the hawksters' cries, all the clatter characteristic of that town. The milk-vendor, the honey-vendor, the chestnut-vendor, each has his own traditional theme. The candlestick-maker produces a sonorous peal from two copper candlesticks, the scissors-grinder whistles on his flute....
After a few months, the revenue of the mysterious stranger dried up and "One-eyed Dutchy" was discharged. A snowstorm found the old Graf with an attack of rheumatism, and helpless. Then he was forced to relinquish his ten-cent cot and move upstairs to a seven-cent bunk. When he was able to get out again, he came back dragging up the rickety old stairs a scissors-grinder.
I had often made the swaddling-clothes for a child, but that was the only time I fashioned a robe for the grave. To fit it around the little neck, and make the sleeves just long enough for the quiet arms it hurt me more than the tilt hammers that smote me in Sheffield, than the files of the scissors-grinder at the door.
Who do you think was the first person who broke this spell of silence? The ruffian whom I had fought under the lamp-post. He is a scissors-grinder it seems, and rang to know if I had a job for him. I could not help grinning at him when I opened the door and saw who it was. He showed no sign of recognising me, however, which is hardly to be wondered at.
This second communiqué comes to us direct from Madame Coutant's, where a triumvirate composed of the scissors-grinder, the woman-who-rents-chairs-in-St.-Gervais, the sacristan's wife, the concierge of the Girls' School, and the widow of an office boy in the City Hall, get their heads together and dispense the news.
"It appears that Garibaldi will not go to Rome this year," remarks my scissors-grinder, who is very red in his sympathies. "The Emperor forbids! Well, patience! And that blessed Pope, what does he want, that Pope? He will be king find priest both, he will wear two pairs of shoes at once!"
Peals of laughter rang through the rooms; smiling faces leaned from the upstairs windows, bowing greeting to the ashman, the scissors-grinder, the Italian and Chinese vegetable-vendors, the rag-sack-and-bottle man, and the other familiar figures of the neighbourhood. It was at the end of a happy, helpful day that Mistress Mary stood in the front door and looked out over her kingdom.
Could they rise from their restful beds, and look on this wandering Italian with his plaster statuettes of Apollo, and Canovan dancers and deities, they would hold his wares little better than Romish saints and idolatries, and would scarcely have the sentimental interest in him felt by the modern citizen of Charlesbridge; but I think that even they must have respected that Lombard scissors-grinder who used to come to us, and put an edge to all the cutlery in the house.
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