As we passed through the city gate, a loud singing struck up just outside the wall, and we beheld the three blind ballad singers, in the midst of a dozen idlers, prancing up and down in their ridiculous dance. They were shouting out one of their ballads, as follows:
“The peddler came, the peddler went, the peddler lost his pack,
He came in honest walnut brown, he went away in black,
And ‘Oh!’ said the peddler, ‘I cannot come again,
For out of buttons ten, oh! only nine remain,
Only nine remain,’—”
My daughter laughed aloud, and at the sound of her voice one of the ballad singers cried out, “Ho! master blackface! Ballads or buttons, what will you buy?”
The idlers laughed, and the other two vagabonds sang out:
“Ballads or buttons! Buy, master blackface! Ballads or buttons!”
“What will you give for a button?” shouted the first, and he held up in my view a large ivory button, the identical one, beyond a doubt, which was missing from the doublet.