1.44. MARKET MORNING.
"Hurrah! this is market day,
Up, lads, and gaily away!"—Old Comedy.
On market mornings there is a roar and a crash all about the corner of Kinsman and Pittsburg Streets. The market building—so called, we presume, because it don't in the least resemble a market building—is crowded with beef and butchers, and almost countless meat and vegetable wagons, of all sorts, are confusedly huddled together all around outside. These wagons mostly come from a few miles out of town, and are always on the spot at daybreak. A little after sunrise the crash and jam commences, and continues with little cessation until ten o'clock in the forenoon. There is a babel of tongues, an excessively cosmopolitan gathering of people, a roar of wheels, and a lively smell of beef and vegetables. The soap man, the headache curative man, the razor man, and a variety of other tolerable humbugs, are in full blast. We meet married men with baskets in their hands. Those who have been fortunate in their selections look happy, while some who have been unlucky wear a dejected air, for they are probably destined to get pieces of their wives' minds on their arrival home. It is true, that all married men have their own way, but the trouble is they don't all have their own way of having it! We meet a newly-married man. He has recently set up housekeeping. He is out to buy steak for breakfast. There are only himself and wife and female domestic in the family. He shows us his basket, which contains steak enough for at least ten able-bodied men. We tell him so, but he says we don't know anything about war, and passes on. Here comes a lady of high degree, who has no end of servants to send to the market, but she likes to come herself, and it won't prevent her shining and sparkling in her elegant drawing-room this afternoon. And she is accumulating muscle and freshness of face by these walks to market.
And here IS a charming picture. Standing beside a vegetable cart is a maiden beautiful and sweeter far than any daisy in the fields. Eyes of purest blue, lips of cherry red, teeth like pearls, silken, golden hair, and form of exquisite mould. We wonder if she is a fairy, but instantly conclude that she is not, for in measuring out a peck of onions she spills some of them; a small boy laughs at the mishap, and she indignantly shies the measure at his head. Fairies, you know, don't throw peck measures at small boys' heads. The spell was broken. The golden chain which for a moment bound us fell to pieces. We meet an eccentric individual in corduroy pantaloons and pepper-and-salt coat, who wants to know if we didn't sail out of Nantucket in 1852 in the whaling brig "Jasper Green." We are compelled to confess that the only nautical experience we ever had was to once temporarily command a canal boat on the dark-rolling Wabash, while the captain went ashore to cave in the head of a miscreant who had winked lasciviously at the sylph who superintended the culinary department on board that gallant craft. The eccentric individual smiles in a ghastly manner, says perhaps we won't lend him a dollar till tomorrow; to which we courteously reply that we CERTAINLY won't, and he glides away.
We return to our hotel, reinvigorated with the early, healthful jaunt, and bestow an imaginary purse of gold upon our African Brother, who brings us a hot and excellent breakfast.