Glimpses of Three Coasts

by Helen Hunt Jackson

Before this messenger arrived, Nixon ran about like a madman, weeping and crying that the king was about sending for him, and that he must go to court to be starved to death.

In a few days the royal messenger appeared. Nixon was turning the spit in his brother's kitchen. Just before the messenger came in sight, he shrieked out, "He is on the road! He is coming for me! I shall be starved!"

Lamenting loudly, he was carried away almost by force, and taken into the presence of the king, who tried him with various tests: among others, he hid a diamond ring, and commanded Nixon to find it; but all the answer he got from the cunning varlet was, "He that hideth can find." The king caused all he said to be carefully noted and put down in writing; gave him the run of the palace, and commanded that no one should molest or offend him in any way.

One day, when the king was setting off on a hunt, Nixon ran to him, crying and begging to be allowed to go too; saying that his time had come now, and he would be starved if he were left behind. To humor his whim and ease his fears, the king gave him into the especial charge and keeping of one of the chief officers of the court. The officer, in turn, to make sure that no ill befell the poor fellow, locked him up in one of his private rooms, and with his own hands carried food to him. But after a day or two, a very urgent message from the king calling this officer suddenly away, in the haste of his departure he forgot Nixon, and left him locked up in the apartment. No one missed him or discovered him; and when at the end of three days the officer returned, Nixon was found dead,—dead, as he had himself foretold, of starvation. It is a strange and pitiful story, a tale suited to its century, and could not be left out were there ever to be written a ballad-history of the Vale-Royale's olden days.

It is a question, in early mornings in Chester, whether to take a turn on the ancient walls, listening to echoes such as these from all the fair country in sight in embrace of the Dee, or to saunter through the market, and hear the shriller but no less characteristic voice of Cestrian life to-day.

Markets are always good vantage-grounds for studying the life and people of a place or region. The true traveller never feels completely at home in a town till he has been in the markets. Many times I have gathered from the chance speech of an ignorant market man or woman information I had been in search of for days. Markets are especially interesting in places where caste and class lines are strongly drawn, as in England. The market man or woman whose ancestors have been of the same following, and who has no higher ambition in life than to continue, and if possible enhance, the good will and the good name of the business, is good authority to consult on all matters within his range. There is a self-poise about him, the result of his satisfaction with his own position, which is dignified and pleasing.

On my last morning in Chester, I spent an hour or two in the markets, and encountered two good specimens of this class. One was a fair, slender girl, so unexceptionably dressed in a plain, well-cut ulster that, as I observed her in the crowd of market-women, I supposed she was a young housekeeper, out for her early marketing; but presently, to my great astonishment, I saw her with her own hands measuring onions into a huckster-woman's basket. On drawing nearer, I discovered that she was the proprietress of a natty vegetable cart, piled full of all sorts of green stuff, which she was selling to the sellers. She could not have been more than eighteen. Her manner and speech were prompt, decisive, business-like; she wasted no words in her transactions. Her little brother held the sturdy pony's reins, and she stood by the side of the cart, ready to take orders. She said that she lived ten miles out of town; that she and her three brothers had a large market garden, of which they did all the work with their own hands, and she and this lad brought the produce to market daily.

"I make more sellin' 'olesale than sellin' standin'," she said; "an' I'm 'ome again by ten o'clock, to be at the work."

I observed that all who bought from her addressed her as "miss," and bore themselves toward her with a certain respectfulness of demeanor, showing that they considered her avocation a grade or so above their own.

A matronly woman, with pink cheeks and bright hazel eyes, had walked in from her farm, a distance of six miles, because the load of greens, eggs, poultry, and flowers was all that her small pony could draw. Beautiful moss roses she had, at "thrippence" a bunch.