On either side of the road, the barrows of the costermongers--the wandering tradesmen of the highway--were drawn up in rows; and every man was advertising his wares, by means of the cheap publicity of his own voice. Fish and vegetables; pottery and writing-paper; looking-glasses, saucepans, and coloured prints--all appealed together to the scantily filled purses of the crowds who thronged the pavement. One lusty vagabond stood up in a rickety donkey-cart, knee-deep in apples, selling a great wooden measure full for a penny, and yelling louder than all the rest. “Never was such apples sold in the public streets before! Sweet as flowers, and sound as a bell. Who says the poor ain’t looked after,” cried the fellow, with ferocious irony, “when they can have such apple-sauce as this to their loin of pork? Here’s nobby apples; here’s a penn’orth for your money. Sold again! Hullo, you! you look hungry. Catch! there’s an apple for nothing, just to taste. Be in time, be in time before they’re all sold!” Amelius moved forward a few steps, and was half deafened by rival butchers, shouting, “Buy, buy, buy!” to audiences of ragged women, who fingered the meat doubtfully, with longing eyes. A little farther--and there was a blind man selling staylaces, and singing a Psalm; and, beyond him again, a broken-down soldier playing “God save the Queen” on a tin flageolet. The one silent person in this sordid carnival was a Lascar beggar, with a printed placard round his neck, addressed to “The Charitable Public.” He held a tallow candle to illuminate the copious narrative of his misfortunes; and the one reader he obtained was a fat man, who scratched his head, and remarked to Amelius that he didn’t like foreigners. Starving boys and girls lurked among the costermongers’ barrows, and begged piteously on pretence of selling cigar-lights and comic songs. Furious women stood at the doors of public-houses, and railed on their drunken husbands for spending the house-money in gin. A thicker crowd, towards the middle of the street, poured in and out at the door of a cookshop. Here the people presented a less terrible spectacle--they were even touching to see. These were the patient poor, who bought hot morsels of sheep’s heart and liver at a penny an ounce, with lamentable little mouthfuls of peas-pudding, greens, and potatoes at a halfpenny each. Pale children in corners supped on penny basins of soup, and looked with hungry admiration at their enviable neighbours who could afford to buy stewed eels for twopence. Everywhere there was the same noble resignation to their hard fate, in old and young alike. No impatience, no complaints. In this wretched place, the language of true gratitude was still to be heard, thanking the good-natured cook for a little spoonful of gravy thrown in for nothing--and here, humble mercy that had its one superfluous halfpenny to spare gave that halfpenny to utter destitution, and gave it with right good-will.