“Peaches! Fine! Peaches! Fine! Fine!”
Whenever a customer came close enough, these words were called to him in a soft, persuasive tone. He would bend gracefully forward, pick up a peach as if the mere lifting of it were a sufficient inducement, take up a paper bag as if the possible transaction were an assured thing, and look engagingly into the passerby’s eyes. When it was really settled that a purchase was intended, no word, however brief, could fail to convey to him the import of the situation and the number of peaches desired.
“Five—ten.” The mention of a sum of money. “These,” or your hand held up, would bring quickly what you desired.
Grace was the perfect word with which to describe this man’s actions.
From one until seven o’clock of this sweltering afternoon, every moment of his time was occupied. The police made it difficult for him to earn his living, for the simple reason that they were constantly making him move on. Not only the regular policemen of the beat, but the officers of the crossing, and the wandering wayfarers from other precincts all came forward at different times and hurried him away.
“Get out, now!” ordered one, in a rough and even brutal tone. “Move on. If I catch you around here any more to-day I’ll lock you up.”
The old Italian lowered his eyes and hustled his cart out into the sun.
“And don’t you come back here any more,” the policeman called after him; then turning to me he exclaimed: “Begob, a man pays a big license to keep a store, and these dagos come in front of his place and take all his business. They ought to be locked up—all of them.”
“Haven’t they a right to stand still for a moment?” I inquired.
“They have,” he said, “but they haven’t any right to stand in front of any man’s place when he don’t want them there. They drive me crazy, keeping them out of here. I’ll shoot some of them yet.”