Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/264

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STREET-CORNER MEN.
265

yer bacca; and all for the small sum of sixpence! Now hain't that much better than sharpening hup the hold knife on the winder-sill in yer shirt sleeves, when the people's a-coming out o' church down below? Now, who'll 'ave 'em, honly sixpence, and I'll make yer a present of the sheet of paper they’re wrapped in?"

And so he went on, when one article hung fire promptly introducing fresh ones.

Many other street-corner men there are; the sweetstuff man, for instance, who sells so rapidly that two boys are employed to open the bags for him—one penny a quarter of a pound—and occasionally mohair lace sellers, puzzle and toy retailers, shipwrecked mariners, street butchers, song sellers, negro entertainers, and others; but we have endeavoured, within the limits of this article, to indicate only some of the characters who make a speciality of a street-corner pitch, rather than the heterogeneous army of those who may be termed the kerbstone characters of the London streets.


"A sweetstuff man."