SISTER SUE'S DREAM ABOUT BROTHER TOMMY.
AN IRON PLUM.
The London coster has become a very interesting character, and many songs, and good ones too, have been written about his virtues and his weaknesses. Some of these street venders have made fortunes, and have retired to live the balance of their days in ease. One of these retired gentlemen was interviewed not long ago by a London newspaper, and in the course of the talk he showed how some of them had managed to grow rich so speedily.
"The costers wot sold plums made the money," he said, "an' a bloomin' big part of it came from wot they calls the iron plum. A fair take in that was. You wouldn't have known it from a real 'un—colored just the same, and with a good bloom on it. Course you took care to keep it close at hand, and at your side of the heap you was selling from. 'Come and have lumping weight,' says you, and you popped the iron 'un in among the others, and wallop went the scale, with p'r'haps no more than half a p'und instead of a p'und in.
"All you had to do was to take just one—the one, as being rather too much of a good thing in the way of overweight, just as you were handing the plums to the customer, and the trick was done. It was bowled out, though, in a rum sort o' way before it had been in use long enough to do any of 'em so much good. I had a pitch in Leather Lane at the time, and it being plum season, I was working the bullet, as we used to call it, and so was the woman who kept the stall next to me. There used to be a beadle sort of chap to keep order in the lane, and he was always uncommon handy at spotting the finest fruit on a man's barrow and whipping it into his mouth without so much as asking for it. Course you couldn't say anything against it, or you might set up his back against you. So one day he was coming round as usual, and he spies that particler fine black plum on the woman's stall, and before she could prevent it he had hold of it. I s'pose it was her pouncing on him so quick confused him, and prewented him feeling the extra weight of it. 'Don't take that 'un, Mr. Grabbum,' she said; 'it isn't ripe. Let me pick you out a ripe 'un.' But old Grabbum he only grinned and winked, and popped it into his mouth. But he didn't keep it there long. He made one bite at it, and then he began to dance and splutter, which, being an uncommon thing for a beadle to do, soon brought a crowd round him. But it was wuss than we had first thought it was. We didn't know that the greedy old warment had false teeth, but he had, and he broke 'em all to shivereens along with the iron plum, which fell with such a whack on the pavement that there was no mistaking what it was made for."