r spectacles in the world than a ragged coat or a
soiled and shabby gown, at a festival.

This unfragrant crowd was exceedingly dense, being welded together,
as it were, in the street through which we strove to make our way. On
either side were oyster-stands, stalls of oranges, (a very prevalent
fruit in England, where they give the withered ones a guise of freshness
by boiling them,) and booths covered with old sail-cloth, in which the
commodity that most attracted the eye was gilt gingerbread. It was so
completely enveloped in Dutch gilding that I did not at first recognize
an old acquaintance, but wondered what those golden crowns and images
could be. There were likewise drums and other toys for small children,
and a variety of showy and worthless articles for children of a larger
growth; though it perplexed me to imagine who, in such a mob, could have
the innocent taste to desire playthings, or the money to pay for them.
Not that I have a right to accuse the mob, on my own knowledge, of being
any less innocent than a set of cleaner and better dressed people might
have been; for, though one of them stole my pocket-handkerchief, I could
not but consider it fair game, under the circumstances, and was grateful
to the thief for sparing me my purse. They were quiet, civil, and
remarkably good-humored, making due allowance for the national
gruffness; there was no riot, no tumultuous swaying to and fro of the
mass, such as I have often noted in an American crowd, no noise of
voices, except frequent bursts of laughter, hoarse or shrill, and a
widely diffused, inarticulate murmur, resembling nothing so much as the
rumbling of the tide among the arches of London Bridge. What immensely
perplexed me was a sharp, angry sort of rattle, in all quarters, far off
and close at hand, and sometimes right at my own back, where it sounded
as if the stout fabric of my English surtout had been ruthlessly rent in
twain; and everybody's clothes, all over the fair, were evidently being
torn asunder in the same way. By-and-by, I discovered that this strange
noise was produced by a little instrument called "The Fun of the
Fair,"--a sort of rattle, consisting of a wooden wheel, the cogs of
which turn against a thin slip of wood, and so produce a rasping sound
when drawn smartly against a person's back. The ladies draw their
rattles against the backs of their male friends, (and everybody passes
for a friend at Greenwich Fair,) and the young men ret