Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 | Page 5

against the wind.
R'tat he goes on our side, then down he jumps into the road--B'bang on
the other side--tacks about again, and serves the terrace--off again, and
serves the villas, and so on till he has fairly epistolised both sides of the
way, and vanished round the corner. The vision of his gold band and
red collar is anxiously looked for in the morning by many a fair face,
which a watchful observer may see furtively peering through the
drawing-room window-curtains. After he has departed, and the
well-to-do merchants and employers who reside in the villas opposite
have had time to look over their correspondence, come sundry neat
turn-outs from the stables and coach-houses in the rear of the villas: a
light, high gig, drawn by a frisky grey, into which leaps young Oversea
the shipbroker--a comfortable, cushioned four-wheel drawn by a pair of
bay ponies, into which old Discount climbs heavily, followed perhaps
by his two daughters, bound on a shopping-visit to the city--and a
spicy-looking, rattling trap, with a pawing horse, which has a decided
objection to standing still, for Mr Goadall, the wealthy cattle-drover.
These, with other vehicles of less note, all roll off the ground by a
quarter after ten o'clock or so; and the ladies and their servants, with
some few exceptions, are left in undisputed possession of home, while
not a footfall of man or beast is heard in the sunshiny quiet of the street.

The quiet, however, is broken before long by a peculiar and suggestive
cry. We do not hear it yet ourselves, but Stalker, our black cat and
familiar, has caught the well-known accents, and with a characteristic
crooning noise, and a stiff, perpendicular erection of tail, he sidles
towards the door, demanding, as plainly as possible, to be let out. Yes,
it is the cats-meat man. 'Ca' me-e-et--me-yet--me-e-yet!' fills the
morning air, and arouses exactly thirty responsive feline voices--for
there is a cat to every house--and points thirty aspiring tails to the
zenith. As many hungry tabbies, sables, and tortoise-shells as can get
out of doors, are trooping together with arched backs upon the
pavement, following the little pony-cart, the cats' commissariat
equipage, and each one, anxious for his daily allowance, contributing
most musically his quota to the general concert. We do not know how it
is, but the cats-meat man is the most unerring and punctual of all those
peripatetic functionaries who undertake to cater for the consumption of
the public. The baker, the butcher, the grocer, the butterman, the
fishmonger, and the coster, occasionally forget your necessities, or omit
to call for your orders--the cats-meat man never. Other traders, too,
dispense their stock by a sliding-scale, and are sometimes out of stock
altogether: Pussy's provider, on the contrary, sticks to one price from
year's end to year's end, and never, in the memory of the oldest
Grimalkin, was known to disappoint a customer. A half-penny for a
cat's breakfast has been the regulation-price ever since the horses of the
metropolis began to submit to the boiling process for the benefit of the
feline race.
By the time the cats have retired to growl over their allowance in
private, the daily succession of nomadic industrials begin to lift up their
voices, and to defile slowly along Our Terrace, stopping now and then
to execute a job or effect a sale when an opportunity presents itself. Our
limits will not allow us to notice them all, but we must devote a few
paragraphs to those without whom our picture would be incomplete.
First comes an ingenious lass of two or three-and-twenty, with a
flaming red shawl, pink ribbons in her bonnet, and the hue of health on
a rather saucy face. She carries a large basket on her left arm, and in her
right hand she displays to general admiration a gorgeous group of

flowers, fashioned twice the size of life, from tissue-paper of various
colours. She lifts up her voice occasionally as she marches slowly
along, singing, in a clear accent: 'Flowers--ornamental papers for the
stove--flowers! paper-flowers!' She is the accredited herald of
summer--a phenomenon, this year, of very late appearance. We should
have seen her six weeks ago, if the summer had not declined to appear
at the usual season. She is the gaudy, party-coloured ephemera of street
commerce, and will disappear from view in a fortnight's time, to be
seen no more until the opening summer of '53. Her wares, which are
manufactured with much taste, and with an eye to the harmony of
colours, are in much request among the genteel housewives of the
suburbs. They are exceedingly cheap, considering the skill which must
be applied in their construction. They are all the work of her own hands,
and have occupied her time and swallowed up her