OBSTRUCTING THE PAVEMENT.
A poor applewoman is not allowed to loiter on the pavement. The lithographic artist, who draws the reddest salmon and setting suns on the flagstones, is instantly told by the policeman to "walk his chalks." The broken-down tradesman, with his white neckcloth, and black gloves with the fingers peeping out of the tips, is not allowed to lean against a door-post, and offer, in a melancholy attitude, his lucifer-matches for sale. The same rigour is exercised towards the hundred-bladed Jew boy, the barefooted girl with her bunch of violets, and the grinning Italian with his organ. Not one of them is allowed to monopolise the pavement, but is immediately commanded by the ferocious policeman to "move on." But there is a class of persons who are permitted to remain still, where a child who is crying her apples "three a penny" is not allowed even to loiter. This class of persons is not the most reputable class to come in contact with, nor the pleasantest even to look at. It is the betting class. Pass a betting-shop when you will, you are sure to find an immense crowd collected outside it.
There is no knowing what they talk about—and we have not the slightest wish to increase our knowledge—but there they will stand for hours, running in and out of the shop, in the most feverish state, exchanging memoranda in half-whispers, and dotting down incomprehensible figures in little clasp-books, which they hold up close to their breasts, for fear any one should see what they are inscribing in them. They seem dreadfully afraid lest any one should peep over their shoulders, and discover the wonderful "odds" they are pencilling down. We have no particular love or partiality for this numerous class of Her Majesty's subjects. We do not like them, with their slangy stable coats, their sporting hats knowingly cocked on one side, and their suspicious looks that seem to say of every one on whom their sharp, calculating glances fall, "Well, I wonder how green you are, and I wonder what harvest I shall get out of your greenness." We do not like this betting genus, with its whips and switchy canes, and thick-ruled trowsers, into which a small five-barred gate seems to have been compressed, and its sensual thick-lipped mouths, that are invariably playing with a flower or a piece of straw, or caressing the end of a pencil.
Now, this class of persons blocks up our public pavements. Attempt to pass by the Haymarket, or Jermyn Street, or the purlieus of Leicester Square, about four or five o'clock, and you will find that the arteries of circulation are tied up by those thick coagulated knots of betting men. The thoroughfare is quite impassable, and you are compelled to go into the mud of the road to avoid being soiled by the refuse of the pavement. We wish the police would, until the entire system is abolished, sweep away the offensive nuisance, for we do not see why betting men should be allowed to carry on their trade on the flagstones any more than applewomen, or even your openly-professed beggar. The police might be worse engaged than in making them "move on." In this instance we would have them not pay the slightest respect to their "betters."