=198. Arrangement of Shops. Streets Blocked by Hucksters.=--What the inferior shops were like has been already seen in the local survey of Mercury Street. They are almost countless in number but are very small, the bulk of their wares being on sale upon the open counters facing the street, and often you can make all your purchases without going inside. The proprietor and his wife with a slave or two manage the entire business, unless, indeed, they manufacture, let us say, the shoes which they retail; in which case a workroom directly in the rear keeps busy a few more slaves or free wage-workers. The shop fronts are protected at night and on holidays by heavy wooden shutters which, when raised, project into the street serving as a kind of awnings. They are the more necessary to guard against thieves and also against a riot. Shop-keepers are proverbially timid folk, and to say “all the shutters are being closed down” is practically to say that a brawl or a tumult seems possible. The small size of these shops makes their owners encroach upon the streets whenever they can. The counters thrust out over the scanty sidewalk, while pedestrians trip over the boards with placards set in front of the shops advertising the wares inside. In such narrow streets a little knot of bargain hunters can readily halt all traffic. Every now and then, indeed, the City Præfect orders his deputies, “Enforce the shop edicts!” A few offending hucksters are hailed into court and the rest draw back their counters. “Now the city is Rome again and not one vast bazaar,” rejoice the poets of the hour. Then, after a little, official zeal abates, and the streets are as badly cumbered as before. A great deal of the trading, however, goes on without any permanent shops at all. In almost any cross-street or little square one can get a license to locate a table and to set thereon a small stock of such articles as copper or iron pots, the cheaper grades of women’s and men’s shoes, or pieces of cloth, probably woven by the huckster himself, not to mention all kinds of edibles, also the stands of menders of old pots, and others of public letter-writers for the illiterate. Through the midst of all these, beggars glide whining for alms, and children dash about playing hide-and-go-seek.[122]