he docks
where steamers from Rotterdam and Antwerp and India and America, and all
that lie between, come the contributions, ranged presently in due order
in stall and arcade. There is no hint of anything grosser than the great
cabbages, which appear to be London's favorite vegetable. Meat has its
place at Smithfield, and fish at Billingsgate, but the old garden is, in
one sense, true to its name, and gives us only the kindly fruits of the
earth, with their transformations into butter and cheese.

In the central arcade fruit has the honors, and no prettier picture can
well be imagined. For once under these gray skies there is a sense of
color and light, and there is no surprise in hearing that Turner came
here to study both, and that even the artist of to-day does not disdain
the same method.

It is the flower-market, however, to which one turns with a certainty
gained at once that no disappointment follows intimate acquaintance
with English flowers. There are exotics for those who will, but it is
not with them that one lingers. It is to the hundreds upon hundreds of
flower-pots, in which grow roses and geraniums and mignonette and a
score with old-fashioned but forever beloved names. There are great
bunches of mignonette for a penny, and lesser bunches of sweet odors for
the same coin, while the violets have rows of baskets to themselves, as
indeed they need, for scores of buyers flock about them,--little buyers
chiefly, with tangled hair and bare feet and the purchase-money tied in
some corner of their rags; for they buy to sell again, and having
tramped miles it may be to this fountain-head, will tramp other miles
before night comes, making their way into court and alley and under
sunless doorways, crying "Violets! sweet violets!" as they were cried in
Herrick's time. A ha'penny will buy one of the tiny bunches which they
have made up with swift fingers, and they are bought even by the
poorest; how, heaven only knows. But, in cracked jug or battered tin,
the bunch of violets sweetens the foul air, or the bit of mignonette
grows and even thrives, where human kind cannot.

So, though Covent Garden has in winter "flowers at guineas apiece,
pineapples at guineas a pound, and peas at guineas a quart,"--these for
the rich only,--it has also its possibilities for the poor. They throng
about it at all times, for there is always a chance of some stray orange
or apple or rejected vegetable that will help out a meal. They thro