feature of the literary world, penny papers. Here we may tread boldly—there is no question about their value; only a penny! with the programme of their contents printed on a limp sheet and kept steady on the ground by three or four stones, so that you can estimate the value of your pennyworth before you make up your mind to possess it. Besides the penny papers there is a marvellous issue of penny periodicals, with as much letterpress for your money as is contained in anything else, with the exception of advertisements.
The resuscitated order of shoeblacks too, adds another item to the catalogue of penny exchanges. I sometimes think those energetic little traders must keep a lump of paste-blacking in their months, as they produce so much of the polishing medium therefrom. I wish they would not point so perseveringly at one’s boots when they are clean. To revert to an annual influx of country blood, I mean the visitors to the Baker Street Cattle Show, the shoeblacks go almost mad at the crowd of dirty highlows and bluchers which circulate about during that week. To them the sight must be quite as bewildering as the approach of unusually numerous shoals of herrings to the fisherman who has only one net—he cannot catch them all—they float by in provoking abundance.
Did you ever have your boots cleaned for a penny—the sensation at first is very curious. Blacky pounces on the foot, and brushes your trousers first, scratching off the bigger splashes with his nails; it is like putting your toe in the way of a quarrelsome house-terrier, which makes ineffectual attempts to worry the intruder. The operation is always performed in a desperate hurry. Sometimes these brats add ingenious advertisements to their energy. I remember one who wore on his right foot a ragged, muddy old boot, while his left was covered with another which was neat, whole, and polished.
Only a penny! I don’t seem to have begun to think about it yet. I see penny tarts, buns, ices, rolls, trumpets, savings’ banks, rules of prudential statistics, proverbs. I think of social economy and children’s trinkets. The wealth of nations and the German bazaar—the inland revenue, penny gaffs, and the new coinage—the mind hurries on through crowds of thoughts all characterised by pence, and looks down vistas of reflection leading everywhere to the same coin, and ever returning the same answer to the inquirer, “Only a penny!”
We will take breath and linger for a minute by some of the objects which we are tempted to pass by so rapidly. Where shall we begin? Let us go into that pastrycook’s shop and look about us. Certainly we want a better class of refreshment rooms than those between a public-house and a confectioner’s. It is expensive work to go into an inn, there is too the necessity of ordering this and that at a coffee-shop. Thus ladies and poor gentry, especially country cousins, keep the pastrycook on his legs—for there you can get your bun for a penny, and lunch on copper. There is no need to order anything, no bill is presented as you leave the establishment. You may look about you without being interrupted by a waiter, you are not expected to sit down. Indeed, to tell the truth, I for one never felt any inclination to do so there, at least not since the elastic digestive days of school-boyhood. There is nothing hearty in a pastrycook’s, nothing but sweets. Biscuits are not luscious, certainly, but they are dry, chippy food alone. A man, I imagine, who lived on nothing but biscuits, would before long get so full of flour as to make it fly about when he clapped his hands,like dust from pipeclayed gloves. The worst of the matter is, that the penny sweets are more or less perfumed, at least to my senses. Scent and taste ought not to be confounded. The nose and the mouth have their respective business to attend to; and though clean sweets are a natural gratification to the nostril and palate, which no one need be ashamed of, one does not like to smell with the tongue. Who would drink rosewater? Talking of the effect of sweets when applied to the wrong place, I remember once being summoned to a woman who had, so my informant said, poisoned herself in the porch. She lay on the ground, apparently in extremis, and muttered that she had taken oil of almonds; there was an empty bottle by her side. I smelt it, it was not that; so I handed her and the phial over to a couple of policemen, who in due time took her before a magistrate. It turned out that the poor creature had actually made an attempt on her own life, and for this purpose had asked for oil of almonds at a chemist’s,—I think Bell’s, in Oxford Street. He gave her almond oil, which had nearly the same effect; at least she thought so, as she lay sick and frightened in the porch. Conceive the sensation of swallowing a whole bottle of scented hair oil, slowly, out of a phial. Faugh! I confess I am reminded of this incident, however faintly, by some of the sensations at a pastrycook’s.
Let us pass out and follow that kindly aunt who has been stuffing those children ever so long with all manner of indiscreet penny abominations. They are going to the German Bazaar, where the stores of penny toys are to the occasional appearance of them in the streets, what the Arctic Regions are to the stray icebergs to be met with sometimes in the passage from England to America. Here a roaring trade in precious trumpery is driven throughout the holidays. There is nothing sold which will not break at once; the object of the manufacturer is to produce frailty and elaborate pretentious weakness. However, on this account, they are most valuable, as toys, especially when given. They cost nothing; excite gratitude and admiration, and then come to pieces before the possessor is satiated. But, methinks, the people who make these brittle fabrics must suffer morally. There is a saying sometimes heard from the lips of sly dishonest men, “Good work is bad for trade;” but all these poor foreigners who stick these toys together must take it as the very principle of their business.
You never wish for a strong toy. It would make a child rough and impetuous, for he must break it at last, if it won’t come apart kindly. So the German artist strives to excel in failure, and lives by imperfection: but even with the intentional carelessness of his work, when you have to deduct the cost of carriage and profit made by the stall-keeper in London, it is wonderful how he
