ht dazzled
his eyes; he heard all round him the shouting of innumerable voices. For
the first time since he had been in London, he found himself in one of
the street-markets of the poor.

On either side of the road, the barrows of the costermongers--the
wandering tradesmen of the highway--were drawn up in rows; and every man
was advertising his wares, by means of the cheap publicity of his own
voice. Fish and vegetables; pottery and writing-paper; looking-glasses,
saucepans, and coloured prints--all appealed together to the scantily
filled purses of the crowds who thronged the pavement. One lusty
vagabond stood up in a rickety donkey-cart, knee-deep in apples, selling
a great wooden measure full for a penny, and yelling louder than all the
rest. "Never was such apples sold in the public streets before! Sweet
as flowers, and sound as a bell. Who says the poor ain't looked after,"
cried the fellow, with ferocious irony, "when they can have such
apple-sauce as this to their loin of pork? Here's nobby apples; here's
a penn'orth for your money. Sold again! Hullo, you! you look hungry.
Catch! there's an apple for nothing, just to taste. Be in time, be in
time before they're all sold!" Amelius moved forward a few steps, and
was half deafened by rival butchers, shouting, "Buy, buy, buy!" to
audiences of ragged women, who fingered the meat doubtfully, with
longing eyes. A little farther--and there was a blind man selling
staylaces, and singing a Psalm; and, beyond him again, a broken-down
soldier playing "God save the Queen" on a tin flageolet. The one silent
person in this sordid carnival was a Lascar beggar, with a printed
placard round his neck, addressed to "The Charitable Public." He held
a tallow candle to illuminate the copious narrative of his misfortunes;
and the one reader he obtained was a fat man, who scratched his head,
and remarked to Amelius that he didn't like foreigners. Starving boys
and girls lurked among the costermongers' barrows, and begged piteously
on pretence of selling cigar-lights and comic songs. Furious women stood
at the doors of public-houses, and railed on their drunken husbands for
spending the house-money in gin. A thicker crowd, towards the middle of
the street, poured in and out at the door of a cookshop. Here the people
presented a less terrible spectacle--they were even touching to see.
These were the patient poor, who bought hot morsels of sheep's heart
and liver at a penny an ounce, with l