"The race of yore, Who danced our infancy upon their knee, And told our marvelling boyhood legends store Of their strange ventures happ'd by land or sea, How are they blotted from the things that be."--_Scott._ [Illustration] CHAPTER XVIII. STREET AMUSEMENTS. At different times several ephemeral little treatises have appeared professing to teach the inhabitants of London how to live upon 50_l._, 100_l._, and divers other sums a year, not one, however, pointing out the way by which any of these incomes were to be obtained. Mrs. Glasse went very differently to work when she attempted to throw a new light upon the economy of cooking, by advising her readers to "first catch their hare," thereby conveying most sensible information in one brief unmistakable sentence, and leaving them to proceed with the receipt, or not, just as they were or might be provided with the animal treated of. Although this introduction is hardly to the point, it will serve to lead us to the ways and means hundreds have recourse to of obtaining a livelihood, by appealing to our eyes and ears, by the sights and sounds which they produce in our busy streets; causing those within doors to curse their deafening clamour, and those without, who are interrupted by the assembled crowd, and prevented from passing on their way, to utter any thing but blessings upon their "devoted heads," proving the moral of the old fable, that what is fun to one is death to another, by one class being amused at the expense of another's annoyance. For our part we look on these street performers with a very lenient eye, knowing that they are struggling to live in the best way they can, and that their humble endeavours to please afford amusement to thousands. Look how the little urchins run at the first sound of Punch's well-known voice; what a pattering there is of shod and unshod feet from every court and alley in the neighbourhood as soon as his "chuck, chuck, churee" is heard, startling the silence of the street! They whip up their marbles, and start off with their pegtops half wound to get a front place; for the hardened old rogue was a favourite with their forefathers, and they are never weary of seeing him bang Judy with his truncheon. They have a keen relish for his rather coarse jokes--the only objectionable point in this old exhibition. How they dance round an Italian boy with his organ, forgetting all their poverty and hunger for the moment, while some little rascal, the raggedest in the group, keeps excellent time with his castanets, which are four bare bones placed between the fingers of each hand, and rattled over his head with laughter and delight, while he thinks himself the chief contributor to the amusement.