James Greenwood

“ His playground is the pavement, and the only amusements he takes kindly to are those which are not inconsistent with his lying on the flat of his ragged back, or curled up dogwise in sunny nooks and corners. ”

“ Such prodigious success attended the first penny ice-cream seller that hundreds of others scented the feast afar off, and at the present time ice-cream stalls are as common almost as fruit-stalls. It seems, however, that an Englishman can no more manufacture the dainty than he can turn the handle of a street-organ. The operator in both cases must be Italian, and to all appearance, the whole fraternity of ice-cream producers have pitched their tents by the side of those of the Back-hill organ folk. ”

“ The extent of their prosperity may be judged from the fact that a smart public-house in the latter neighbourhood has thought it worth while to have conspicuously notified that that is the only house-of-call for ice-cream merchants and Italian musicians. ”

“ A ragged young native of sunny Italy emerges from an alley, staggering under a head-load of chalk images and monuments, calls out to one of the seeming conspirators, evidently his master, and engages with him in brief converse, the subject of which, seemingly, is the victualling for the day of the image vendor, for the former enters a baker's shop close at hand, and presently emerges with part of a loaf of the half-quartern size. ”

“ That they are harmless creatures enough there can be no doubt; indeed, while the stranger wonderingly regards them, there occurs an incident which, while it totally destroys the romance, serves to exculpate at least one of the cloaked, moustache-twirling patriarchs from all suspicion of being anything but an honest handicraftsman. ”

“ It is pleasant, however, to find that be is happy and content with English gutters and the manufacture of mud-pies, and that, cut off from the grapes and melons of his native clime, he finds consolation at the sweetstuff shop and at the stall at the corner where damaged plums are sold at the rate of a half-penny the saucerful. ”

“ IT is a fact not generally known that within the last four or five years a foreign horde has penetrated to the very heart of London, and successfully besieged and ousted the inhabitants, dispossessing them of their houses and tenements, and settling themselves in their place without further contention or remonstrance on the part of the ejected. ”

“ The stocks exposed therein consist almost entirely of maccaroni, half-yard lengths of crusty bread, all manner of beans in bowls, common sausages in their vulgar brown skins, sausages of genteeler mould smartly coated in tinfoil, and green, yellow, and purple liquids in clumsy glass bottles heavily stoppled with coarse wax; but most un-English of all are the children in the streets. The boy of British blood - albeit of ragamuffin extraction - is invariably an active lad. ”

“ The thoroughfares are narrow here, and the houses tall, and the amazed stranger gazes upwards to see a pair of strangely draped and becowled old women briskly gesticulating, and chattering to each other from opposite sides of the way in outlandish lingo ”

“ His old jacket is buttoned to his chin, and it is plain that an overture on the part of the aged man to break the bread in two pieces, and thrust one in each of the youth's trousers-pockets, is not favourably regarded. ”

“ The reader is possibly likewise aware that from time out of mind the invariable system pursued by the whole race of peripatetic instrumentalists was to quit their sunny clime unattended by their wives and families, and sojourn amongst us only for so long as sufficed for the scraping together of a certain sum, and then to make their way home again, thus giving place to new adventurers, their kith and kin, who were eagerly anxious to try their luck in the same direction. ”