Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 | Page 7

face of the earth but
in the suburbs of London. He is, par excellence, the exponent of a
feeling which pervades the popular mind in the metropolis on the
subject of the duty which respectable people owe to respectability. It is
impossible for a housekeeper in a neighbourhood having any claims to
gentility, to escape the recognition of this feeling in the lower class of
industrials. If you have a broken window in the front of your house, the
travelling glazier thinks, to use his own expression, that you have a
right to have it repaired, and therefore that he, having discovered the
fracture, has a right to the job of mending it. If your bell-handle is out
of order or broken off, the travelling bellman thinks he has a right to
repair it, and bores you, in fact, until you commission him to do so--and
so on. In the same manner, and on the same principle, so soon as the
fine weather sets in, and the front-gardens begin to look gay, the
graveller loads his cart with gravel, and shouldering his spade, crawls
leisurely through the suburbs with his companion, peering into every
garden; and wherever he sees that the walks are grown dingy or
moss-grown, he knocks boldly at the door, and demands to be set to
work in mending your ways. The best thing you can do is to make the
bargain and employ him at once; if not, he will be round again
to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, and bore you into
consenting at last. You live in a respectable house, and you have a right
to keep your garden in a respectable condition--and the graveller is
determined that you shall do so: has he not brought gravel to the door
on purpose? it will cost you but a shilling or two. Thus he lays down
the law in his own mind; and sooner or later, as sure as fate, he lays
down the gravel in your garden.
While the graveller is patting down the pathway round Robinson's

flower-bed, we hear the well-known cry of a countryman whom we
have known any time these ten years, and who, with his wife by his
side, has perambulated the suburbs for the best part of his life. He has
taken upon himself the patronage of the laundry department, and he
shoulders a fagot of clothes-poles, ten feet long, with forked extremities,
all freshly cut from the forest. Coils of new rope for drying are hanging
upon his arm, and his wife carries a basket well stocked with
clothes-pins of a superior description, manufactured by themselves.
The cry of 'Clo'-pole-line-pins' is one long familiar to the
neighbourhood; and as this honest couple have earned a good
reputation by a long course of civility and probity, they enjoy the
advantage of a pretty extensive connection. Their perambulations are
confined to the suburbs, and it is a question if they ever enter London
proper from one year's end to another. It is of no use to carry
clothes-poles and drying-lines where there are no conveniences for
washing and drying.
Next comes a travelling umbrella-mender, fagoted on the back like the
man in the moon of the nursery rhyme-book. He is followed at a short
distance by a travelling tinker, swinging his live-coals in a sort of tin
censer, and giving utterance to a hoarse and horrible cry, intelligible
only to the cook who has a leaky sauce-pan. Then comes the
chamois-leather woman, bundled about with damaged skins, in request
for the polishing of plate and plated wares. She is one of that
persevering class who will hardly take 'No' for an answer. It takes her a
full hour to get through the terrace, for she enters every garden, and
knocks at every door from No. 1 to No. 30. In the winter-time, she
pursues an analogous trade, dealing in what may strictly be termed the
raw material, inasmuch as she then buys and cries hare-skins and
rabbit-skins. She has, unfortunately, a notoriously bad character, and is
accused of being addicted to the practice of taking tenpence and a
hare-skin in exchange for a counterfeit shilling.
By this time it is twelve o'clock and past, and Charley Coster, who
serves the terrace with vegetables, drives up his stout cob to the door,
and is at the very moment we write bargaining with Betty for new
potatoes at threepence-half-penny a pound. Betty declares it is a

scandalous price for potatoes. 'Yes, dear,' says Charley; 'an' another
scanlous thing is, that I can't sell 'em for no less.' Charley is the most
affectionate of costers, and is a general favourite with the abigails of
the terrace. His turn-out is the very model of a travelling green-grocer's
shop, well stocked with all the fruits and vegetables of