The hot green peas are sold out in halfpennyworths and pennyworths, some vendors, in addition to the usual seasoning supplied, add a suck of bacon. The “suck of bacon” is obtained by the street Arabs from a piece of that article, securely fastened by a string, to obtain a “relish” for the peas, or as is usually said “to flavour ’em;” sometimes these young gamins manage to bite the string and then bolt not only the bacon, but away from the vendors. The popular saying “a plate of veal cut with a hammy knife” is but a refined rendering of the pea and suck-’o-bacon, street luxury trick.
Pea soup is also sold in the streets of London, but not to the extent it was twenty years ago, when the chilled labourer and others having only a halfpenny to spend would indulge in a basin of—“All hot!”
The Flower-Pot Man.
| Here comes the old mail with his flowers to sell, Along the streets merrily going; Full many a year I’ve remember’d him well, With, “Flowers, a-growing, a-blowing.” Geraniums in dresses of scarlet and green; Thick aloes, that blossom so rarely; The long creeping cereus with prickles so keen, Or primroses modest and early. The myrtle dark green, and the jessamine pale, Sweet scented and gracefully flowing, This flower-man carries and offers for sale, “All flourishing, growing, and blowing.” |
With the coming in of spring there is a large sale of Palm; on the Saturday preceding and on Palm Sunday; also of May, the fragrant flower of the hawthorn, and lilac in flower. But perhaps the pleasantest of all cries in early spring is that of “Flowers—All a-growing—all a-blowing,” heard for the first time in the season. Their beauty and fragrance gladden the senses; and the first and unexpected sight of them may prompt hopes of the coming year, such as seem proper to the spring.
| “Come, gentle spring! ethereal mildness! come.” |
The sale of English and Foreign nuts in London is enormous, the annual export from Tarragona alone is estimated at 10,000 tons. Of the various kinds, we may mention the “Spanish,” the “Barcelona,” the “Brazil,” the “Coker-nut,” the “Chesnut,” and “Though last, not least, in love”—The “Walnut!”
“As jealous as Ford, that search’d a hollow wall-nut for his wife’s lemon.”—Merry Wives of Windsor.