"Well, Dick, how do you get the 'pennorth' of oat meal for the porridge?"
"I gets it for cigar stumps. I finds a lot on 'em and sells 'em, and I gets ten browns for a pound on 'em. The tibbaccy man buys 'em, but he wont buy the short ones, cause he says they are all wet and the tibbaccy is all gone from them. I makes tuppence a day sometimes."
There are, I am told, fifty or sixty persons, men and boys, some of whom are Irish, engaged in this branch of the Street Finders' vocation.
It would be tedious to give an account of all the different branches of street selling and buying in London. Their number is legion, and it would be the work of weeks to merely recapitulate all the strange ways and means whereby wretchedness exists in the heart of surrounding splendor, and what would seem to be, but is not—an all-pervading charity.
But I cannot close this chapter without glancing at the street performers—street "Peep" Shows, Reciters, Showmen, Strong Men, Dancing boys and men, Tom Tom players, Street Clowns and Acrobats, Bagpipe players, Negro Serenaders, Street Bands, Punch and Judy shows, and other street folk, who are almost if not as numerous as the hawkers and collectors.
There is to be seen on Saturday nights, in the vicinity of Farringdon and the old London markets, now and then a stray Peep Show man, who frequents the most crowded districts, where the poorer people have money to spend. These Peep Shows are conveyed through the streets on a low four wheeled wagon, sometimes by the performer or proprietor in person, at other times by a donkey. Donkeys cost from two to five pounds in London, according to their breed and tractability.
On the wagon a square box is generally placed, having a large glass front, which is covered with green baize or a dirty velvet curtain.
STREET ACROBATS.