CHAPTER VII.THE LONDON LAWYER.

THE CONSULTATION.

“But how shall we get the corpses?” asked the obtuse Mr. Hare.

“It is far easier,” replied Mr. Burke, “to knock a man on the head than it is to dig him up, and, in addition to the other reasons I have mentioned, a sand-bag or a club is cheaper than a spade.”

“DIGGING CORPSES IS ALL WRONG.”

And Mr. Hare coinciding with Mr. Burke, they went out that night and killed a man, and they kept going out and killing men till thirty had disappeared. The authorities finally got upon their track, when Mr. Hare turned States’ evidenceand hung Mr. Burke, and he went peacefully into some other business.

THE IMPROVED PROCESS OF MESSRS. BURKE AND HARE.

It is needless to add that a careful study of the faces of the two men would not lead one to purposely encounter them in a dark alley after twelve at night. Nothing earthly could be so villainous.

A little incident that occurred the day I explored the Museum illustrates the perfection of the modeling and draping the figures. There were in the party a gentleman and lady from Pennsylvania, the former being a devotee of the alleged science of phrenology, and rather fond of discussing the subject.

THE SCIENCE OF PHRENOLOGY.

A female figure was standing on the floor, which attracted his attention. This was in the Chamber of Horrors.

“I want to call your attention,” he said to his wife, “to this illustration of the truth of phrenology. Could there be modeled a more vicious face? Notice the development back of the ears, showing the head to be all animal, and the pinched forehead and the general insignificance of the front head as compared with the development of the back portion. There is murder in every line of that face. Let me see who it is.”

“Thank you,” exclaimed the figure as it moved away. It was a very estimable American lady whom the phrenologist had mistaken for a wax figure.

OSBORN HOUSE, ISLE OF WIGHT.

LONDONis probably the most expensive place to do business in the world. Its business men are conservative, so conservative that they would not for the world part their hair in any way differing from their fathers, nor would they adopt a modern convenience unless it were absolutely necessary to the maintenance of English supremacy, and they would sigh as they parted with an old nuisance for a modern delight. Their professions have all got into ruts from which you can no more move them than you can the Pyramids, and their practices are so established that they may and do do as they please, without regard to the notions of any body.

An American resident in London bargained for a house, and the lease had to be transferred. Now in any country where a common school exists almost anybody can assign a lease, but not so here. A solicitor had to be employed, and afterward a contract long enough to cover a sheet of legal paper had to be drawn up. It was a very plain matter—forty words would have been sufficient. But a solicitor must be employed nevertheless. How much do you suppose it cost Mr. Foote to have this trifle of work done? As a matter of instruction to the American people and for the benefit of American lawyers, who are too modest in their charges, and I am now convinced that the majority of them are, I make a partial copy of the solicitor’s bill, as it is a more interesting document than anything that I can write. Here it is:

THE SOLICITOR’S BILL.

Clerk attending at Messrs. Ingram’s (Vendor’s Solicitors), fordraft proposed contract

Procuring and considering and found same objectionable

Instructions for contract

Drawing same, folios twenty

Engrossing in two parts

Writing Messrs. Ingram with one part

Writing Mr. Challer for schedule of fixtures to answer to contract

Same as to appointment for Monday

Drawing telegram and attending to forward and paid

Attending you, and then at Messrs. Ingram, engaged a considerabletime going through deed and documents, etc., and settlingcontracts and signing

Writing your hereon, fully

Instructions for registration on title

Drawing same

Engrossing

Attending to deliver

Replying to your letter

Attending appointing conference

Engrossing papers, leases and covenants

Attending Dr. Thomson therewith

Fee to him and clerk

Paid conference fee

Attending conference and cab hire

Perusing his opinion

Writing you with copy Dr. Thomson’s opinion

Making copy of schedule and fixtures

Waiting upon Messrs. Ingram with same

Perusing abstract

Writing with appointment to examine deeds with abstract

Attending examining deeds with abstract, self and clerk

Attending searching liquidation proceedings of Arthur Colemanand paid

As this remarkable document extends over four and a half pages offoolscap paper I will not give it all. However, there are some other chargesworthy of going upon record. For instance this item:

A replying to your letter

And this:

Attending you long conference, and you left cheque for purchase money

Writing you fully

Attending appointing conference

The entire bill footed up forty-two pounds, fourteen shillings and ten pence, which, reduced to bird of freedom money amounts to about two hundred and twenty-five dollars.

And all this for transferring a lease from one party to another, about which operation there couldn’t be the slightest trouble, except as the two attorneys made it.

Doubtless the Messrs. Ingram and Dr. Thomson, whatever he had to do with it, put in a similar bill against their clients, so both sides had a very good thing of it.

But this was not all there was of it. It was necessary that Mr. Foote should have a little article of agreement with Mr. Welch, his manager, not that there was any especial need for it, but as a mere matter of form, as we say when we want a sure thing on somebody. The same attorney was employed to do this, in fact he suggested it and did it before this bill was presented.

THE LONDON LAWYER.

MR. FOOTE’S EXPERIENCE.

The bill for this service is precisely like the other. There are items for “attendance,” for “preparing telegrams,” for “waiting, self and clerk,” for “instructions,” and so on, the amount charged for preparing an article of agreement being eight pounds sterling.

The attorney’s fees for the whole of this trifling piece of business footed up exactly seventy-two pounds sterling, or three hundred and sixty dollars.

“What do these items mean?” I asked Mr. Foote.

“Well, the items for attendance mean that I went to his office and told him in three minutes’ time what I wanted, and he made minutes with a pencil.”

“The clerk?”

“Oh, they never go anywhere without a clerk. His business is to carry a green bag with nothing in it, and look like an umpire. All the writing of letters, for which he relentlessly charged three shillings and sixpence each, was totally unnecessary, as they related to matters of which I fully informed him at the beginning. But he was the most industrious letter writer I ever saw. And I would answer his letters like an idiot, and he charged for replying to mine, and then he would write again and charge for that, and so on. And when he couldn’t decently write another letter, he would telegraph me and charge for that, and—well, if I had taken two leases I shouldn’t have been through till this time.”

“Did you pay it?”

“Pay it? Of course I did. To have resisted would have been ruin. He would have sued me, and I should have had to have employed another attorney, and the case would have gone into the courts, after about a thousand instructions, conferences, letters, and telegrams, and clerks, and all that, from him—the same as this—and it would have dragged along, with more clerks, and letters, and telegrams, till the crack o’ doom. Instead of bills of four pages I should have had bills of forty, and then there would have been money to be paid on account, and bail, and the Lord only knows what. A law suit in London means ruin to everybody but the lawyers and officers of the court. And in the end I should have been compelled to pay it, for the courts take care of the attorneys.And, after all, he only made the regular charges that every London lawyer does. Indeed, as he omitted twice to charge three and six pence for bidding me good morning, I don’t know but that he is rather liberal than otherwise. I think,” said Mr. Foote, reflectively, “that three times he shook my hand, and I find no charge for that. On the whole, he is a tolerable fair lawyer to do business with.”

“Tell me all about him.”

“He is one of say twenty thousand lawyers in London who get a case like this, occasionally. He occupies “chambers,” as they call their offices, and keeps a clerk, as they all have to, to ever expect any business, as a lawyer without a clerk would have no standing. The clerk spends most of his time eating ham sandwiches, having nothing else to do, except when his employer gets a man like myself on a string, on which occasion he follows him about carrying a bag which is supposed to contain papers of great moment. My lease was all that was in that bag for a month or more. He lives well all the time, for no matter how poor he may be, or how little business he has, he must live well for the sake of appearance. Finally he does get the management of a good estate, and is fixed for life. An Englishman reposes confidence in his solicitor, and would no more think of disputing a charge made by him than he would of heading a rebellion. They are doubtless a very nice lot, but the less you have to do with them the better. A little of them go a long way. Dispute his bill, not I. I don’t want to make England a permanent residence, for I hope to get back to America some time, and a law suit would keep me here all my life, provided I had money enough to pay fees and costs. They’ll hold on you as long as you’ve a penny.”

That Mr. Foote did not exaggerate, I know. Had I supposed he had been exaggerating I should not have written this. But I copied this bill from the original, which was receipted by the attorney, who, doubtless, sighed as he wrote his name, that some mistake had not occurred which made litigation necessary.

ITis a very common remark that Americans love to be humbugged. Perhaps they do, but their English cousins can give them points in this desire. The ease with which adventurers and bogus schemers get their claws into English moneybags, is something astounding. Perhaps it is because the nation has so much money that it don’t know what to do with it, or possibly because the Englishman is naturally credulous, but it is a fact that London is the paradise of the sharper, and the pleasant pasture for the bogus speculator.

There are several reasons for it. Interest is very low in England, and for the man who desires to live “like a gentleman” the temptation to increase the rate is very strong. Then again there is an immense amount of capital lying idle and seeking investment, and the man who has just enough money at three per cent. to live upon very closely, is always anxious to increase his income by making it six. Every man who has just money enough to drink beer, has an insatiable thirst for champagne. And the Englishman who has a strong sense of mercantile honor, naturally has more faith than the inhabitant of a country where the standard of honor is lower, and men are, by habit, more cautious of believing.

The papers of London are filled with prospectuses of companies organized for developing something in all parts of the world, and these prospectuses are so written that they would deceive the very elect.

The principal point at the beginning is to get a board with a great many lords, dukes, esquires, and all that sort of thing, on it, the average Englishman not seeming to realize thatthere are a good many of these gentry who are as impecunious as anybody else, and who would do a piece of roguery for enough to live upon comfortably upon the continent, as readily as the commonest sharper in the world. The baronet has a stomach to fill and a back to cover the same as the costermonger. In this, all humanity stands upon an equality.

Before me lies a respectable paper, its pages filled with glowing advertisements of projected companies. The first is for the “Acquiring and further developing the well-known so-and-so gold mine,” in Venezuela.

It begins with the Board of Directors, not one of whom is less in degree than an Esquire, and several “Sirs” figure in it. Then comes the bankers—nothing in London is complete without a banker—then solicitors, then brokers. After this elaborate outfit, all of which looks as solvent and sound as the Bank of England, comes a glowing prospectus.

Nothing can be finer than this prospectus. “The property proposed to be acquird consists of six hundred and fifty-nine acres, which contain the most of the noted Venezuela gold mines. The vein has been traced on the surface for a distance of one thousand nine hundred feet,” and so on. Then comes a very complete table showing the profit thathas beenmade mining in Venezuela, and after this a statement from “Mr. George Atwood, A. M. Inst., C. E., F. G. S., etc., etc.,”—it would not be complete without all these initials, even to the etc., the etc., showing that as learned as is stated there is more behind him,—who makes a statement as to the probable profits of the enterprise, all of which are as good as anybody could desire. The estimated profits are set down at twenty per cent. on the investment.

The capital wanted is two million five hundred thousand dollars, in shares of five dollars each. You are asked to pay the moderate sum of sixty-two cents on application, which is modest enough, and the balance of the five dollars you pay as the work goes on.

AIR-CASTLES.

What could be better than this? Here is a man with some money bearing three per cent., and here is a proposition to give him twenty per cent. There are “Honorables,” and “Sirs,” and “Esquires” on the board, and Mr. Atwood, F. R. S.,and all the rest of it, shows that twenty per cent. has been made in Venezuela. Why should not the man convert some of his beggarly three per cents. into cash and take a shy at it, as Wall street would say, and set up his carriage on the profits? True, he don’t know one of the Sirs or Honorables, and Atwood, F. R. S., etc., is quite as unknown to him. But then the advertisements! They cover half a page in each paper in London, and that costs an immense sum, and were there not something in it how could they make that vast expenditure?

He takes it, never dreaming that the speculators who pay for these advertisements, do it for the purpose of catching just such gudgeons as he is, knowing, for they know human nature, that the modest announcements that are made for really solid investments, would not catch him at all.

There are projected companies for supplying London with fish, all with boards of directors, and all promising from ten to twenty per cent. profit, not one of them with less than two million five hundred thousand dollars capital, in shares of five dollars each. Now there is no city in the world so well supplied with fish as London, in fact the supply is far beyond the demand, and there is no city which has cheaper sea food. There being innumerable private firms in the business, and there being fish markets everywhere, it would be supposed that a man of fair intelligence would question the possibility of any new company being able to compete in the business profitably. But, as in the mining companies, the array of names, and the deliciously worded prospectus, are hooks that never fail to catch. It is not the fish in the sea that these fellows are after.

These are only specimen bricks. There are companies for the development of iron mines, of tin mines, of copper mines, and all other kinds of mines in England, Spain, Algeria, India, and everywhere under the sun, companies proposing to buy vast tracts of land in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, New Mexico, and everywhere else, each with its board of noblemen, its bankers and solicitors.

The American sharpers who have mines in Colorado and Nevada have reaped a rich harvest. The city is full of them.You shall see about the place where Americans most do congregate, sharp faced fellows, dressed very seedily, whose trowsers are chewed off at the heel, and whose coats bear unmistakable evidence of having passed through the renovator’s hands a great many times, and would again if their proprietors only had the one-and-nine pence necessary, or had another to wear while it was being done, the said coats buttoned very closely to the throat, so closely that a cheap scarf conceals the condition of the shirt beneath, if happily there be one, standing listlessly, as if waiting for some one who will never come.

They know you to be an American at once, and one introduces himself, claiming to have seen you in the States:

“What are you doing here?” is your first inquiry.

“Oh, I have been here a year. I came over to place a mine I own in Nevada.”

“How are you getting on?”

“Splendid! I just sold the half of it for five hundred thousand dollars. I ought to have got more for it, but I am tired of waiting, and want to get home, and so I let it go. Five hundred thousand dollars is a good sum, and then I retain a half interest in it. It will make me all the money I shall ever want. By the way have you met any of the nobility? No? I shall be glad to introduce you to the Duke of Buccleugh. I am going down to his country seat to-morrow. He is interested with me, and he’s a devilish clever fellow.”

You plead a prior engagement if you are wise, but you have not seen the last of your American friend who has just sold the half of a mine for five hundred thousand dollars. Oh, no! For the next day he will be waiting for you, and he will volunteer to go about with you in so persistent a way that you cannot refuse without being brutally blunt, and after taking you to all sorts of show places which are open to anybody, and which you want no guide for, he will establish himself in such a way as to make you feel, whether or no, that he has some claim upon you.

Then comes the final stroke. As you part with him, he will take you one side, and then this:

THE AMERICAN MINE-OWNER.

“By the way, I am waiting for the final drawing of papers to complete the sale, when I get my money. I have been hereso long that I have exhausted my ready money, and my remittances did not come by the last steamer, but they must come by the next, which will be Saturday. Would you mind lending me five pounds till Saturday?”

You have but little pocket-money, you say.

“An order on the American Exchange will do as well.”

You never give orders.

He lowers his want, till, finally, when he gets down to five shillings you give it to him, glad to be rid of him so cheaply.

Nevertheless this fellow will finally sell his mine, or his alleged mine. All he has to do is to wait long enough, and he will find some credulous Englishman who will bite at the naked hook, and put his name and influence to it, and it will be done. Then he will go home and establish himself in good style, and be a prominent man.

But what becomes of the English investors? Echo answers. It is a conundrum that goes echoing down the ages, and will only be answered in that period of the next world when everything shall be made plain. The poor widow who put her little pittance in the hands of these sharks doubtless started a private school, if she was qualified for it, or made use of her one accomplishment, painting, music or what not, to earn a miserable existence. The poor clerk who was saving to purchase a home of his own, went back to his lodgings and put his nose freshly upon the grindstone, and the young tradesman went into bankruptcy, his shop passed out of his hands, and he served where he had once commanded. And the shark, if an English one, shelters himself behind his assumed name, or goes to the Continent, and lives in luxury all his days.

Inasmuch as these things have been going on ever since the South Sea bubble it would seem that people would get wiser, and know better than to put their all in such wild-cat schemes. But bear this in mind, the loser never admits that he lost in so stupid a way, and his fellows are never fully informed about it, and besides there are children born every day, a certain percentage of them with sharp teeth, and the rest with fat. The teeth find the fat, the shark finds the gudgeon invariably. That’s his business. When I readthese prospectuses I find myself getting up a great deal of respect for the old barons who, when they wanted money, seized a rich Jew and starved him awhile in a dungeon, and if that gentle treatment did not suffice to extract the requisite cash, pulled out his teeth, one by one, till he disgorged. In those days a venerable Jew whose teeth were all gone was as fortunate as the man caught by the Indians who was bald and wore a wig—he saved his scalp.

THE OLD ENGLISH WAY OF PROCURING A LOAN.

LONDON QUACKS.

These ancient robbers did not add grandiloquent lying to theft. It was with them a simple taking of what they wantedwithout circumlocution. It was highway robbery to picking pockets, and was certainly the preferable of the two.

Were I an Emperor, with absolute power, I should immediately discharge the honest soldier, who would work for a living were he out of the service, and draft in the army all these fellows. And the regiments composed of them should lead every forlorn hope, charge every battery, and do all the dangerous and fatiguing work that soldiers have to do. A country could afford to lose a great many battles to rid itself of these worse than thieves.

Do you remember Dickens’ Montagu Tigg in Martin Chuzzlewit? I used to think it an overdrawn picture, but it is not. It is as correct a portrait as was ever limned.

America has been deemed the paradise of the quack, but before England she must pale her ineffectual fires. Next to beer, patent medicines stare you in the face everywhere. The walls fairly shine with the advertisements of remedies for every disease known to the faculty, and when that supply runs out the ingenious proprietor invents a stock of new ailments that never did exist, and inasmuch as the least of them are six syllabled ones, it is to be hoped never will.

There are medicines for the liver, for the kidneys, for the lungs, for the feet, for the head, for the ears, for the eyes, for the scalp, for the hair, and for every part and parcel of the human body, and for every animal that man has subjugated and brought subservient to his will. There are certificates from Lords, and Dukes, and Honorables, as to the efficiency of Hobson’s Vermifuge, though with these it is always a tenant’s child that was cured, the scions of noble houses being of too blue blood to ever have so vulgar a complaint. In case of gout, or any genuinely aristocratic ailment, they are not so particular.

The advertisement of every remedy ends with the announcement:—

“As there are unprincipled parties in the kingdom who seize upon every article of known merit, to imitate the same, the purchasers of Hobson’s remedies are respectfully requested to particularly observe the label on the bottles. The name of “Hobson” is printed on the steel engraving, on the face of thebottle, fourteen hundred and sixty-three times, and without this none are genuine. Beware of fraudulent imitations.”

And the British dame will stand at the counter and count the wearying repetition, much to the disgust of the shopman, who, knowing that the remedy is only three days old, and that there are no imitations, and never will be, wants her to take her bottle of the stuff and move on and make room for another victim.

“BEWARE OF FRAUDULENT IMITATIONS.”

THE LONDON ADVERTISER.

Their ingenuity in advertising is as good as that of their trans-Atlantic brethren. You see vast vans driven slowly up and down the streets, built up twenty feet with canvass, showing an emaciated mortal, with scarcely an hour of life in him, with the legend underneath, “Before taking Gobson’s Elixir,” and the same party dressed, and walking the streets with the physical perfection of a prize fighter, and underneath, “After taking Gobson’s Elixir.” Transparencies at night flash forth the miraculous virtues of “Hopkins’ Saline Draught,” and there isn’t an inch of dead wall anywhere that has not its burden of announcements. Long processions of ragged men themost of them too old and weak to do anything else, march along the sidewalks sandwiched between two boards, each one bearing testimony to the virtues of some wonderful compound, there being enough of them to weary the eye and make one wish he could go somewhere where advertising was impossible.

One of these human sandwiches remarked to me that the boards were a little uncomfortable in the Summer, but the two made a mighty good overcoat in the Winter.

And as if there was not enough of it already, an enterprising Yankee is here with a steam whale, ninety feet long, spouting water sixty feet high, the machinery and crew concealed in the boat on which it rests, which is to ply up and down the beautiful Thames, bearing upon either side the announcement of a liver pill. The proprietor gives him ten thousand dollars for the use of it for the season, and bears all the expenses of running it. It is very like a whale, and as it attracts much attention will doubtless pay a handsome profit to the man by whom it has been engaged.

The papers are full of such advertising, the only difference between England and America being that the advertisements here are more elegantly written, and couched in really superior English which ours are not, always. The English shoemaker who turns doctor, employs the best literary talent at command to write his announcements, and he pays more liberally than the magazines do the same men. Many a London writer, struggling for fame and a place in literature, makes a handsome addition to his slender income by going into the service of these patent medicine vendors.

Nearly all of them succeed. The British public are a medicine-taking people by nature. There are not many diseases upon the island naturally, but the inhabitants create a very large number by their habits. The universal use of beer—and vile stuff it is—is not conducive to general health, and the Englishman is about the heartiest eater on the globe. He is more than hearty—he verges very closely upon the gluttonous. Consequently he needs medicines, and the manufacturers adapt themselves to the market. There are more than a thousand “after dinner pills,” warranted to correct all theeffect of “over-indulgence at the table,” which means that it will do something toward keeping up a man who eats about four times what he ought to, and drinks enough every year to drive an American or Frenchman into delirium tremens.

The market for these goods is world-wide, and enormous fortunes are amassed. I must say, however, that the trade is not in the best repute. Many brewers have been knighted, but no patent medicine man. In the matter of ennobling people the line must be drawn somewhere. Dickens’ barber drew it at the baker—the English draw it at the brewer.

THE OLD TEMPLE BAR.

THEREis no Petticoat Lane any more, some finnicky board having very foolishly changed the good old name to Middlesex street. There was something suggestive in the name “Petticoat Lane,” for it indicated with great accuracy the business carried on there, but there is nothing suggestive about Middlesex street. It might as well have been called Wellington street, or Wesley street, or Washington street. I hate these changes. A street is a street, and calling it an avenue don’t make it so. Why not Petticoat Lane? By any other name it smells as strong. ItisPetticoat Lane and always will be Petticoat Lane, and despite the edict of the board, the Londoner calls it by that title and always will.

Petticoat Lane is a long, tortuous narrow street, properly a lane, (about the width of an ordinary alley in an American city,) in the heart of the city proper. It is probably the dirtiest spot on the globe. If there is a dirtier I do not wish to see it—or, more especially, to smell it. It is the very acme of filth, the incarnation of dirt, and the very top, the peaked point of the summit of rottenness.

A friend of mine who had lost the sense of smell was condoled with on his misfortune.

“Don’t pity me,” he said, “please don’t. It is a blessing, and not a misfortune. In this imperfect world there are more bad smells than perfumes. If I am deprived of one delight I escape a dozen inflictions. If I can’t enjoy the rose, I, at least, dodge the tan yard.”

Precisely so another friend who had his right leg torn off in a threshing machine during the war, reveled in his cork leg, because, having but one flesh and blood foot, he only took half the chances of ordinary mortals of taking cold from wet feet.

So does philosophy turn misfortunes into blessings. To carry out the idea I suppose the more troubles happen to a man the happier he should be. Would that I could take life that way, but I can’t. Unfortunately the day I was in Petticoat Lane my sense of smell was unusually acute, at least so it seemed to me.

Philosophers of this school should spend a great deal of their time in Petticoat Lane, for in that savory locality all the senses one needs are his eyes and ears. A loss of smell there would be a blessing.

It is the especial street belonging to the Jews. Not the Jews we have in America, the bright, busy, active men, who have left their impress upon every spot they have touched, who have done so much to make America what it is—not the well-dressed, well-housed leader in business and everything else he puts his hands to, but the old kind of Jew, the Jew of Poland, with the long beard and long coat, very like the gaberdine we see in pictures and on the stage, the Jew of Shakespeare, the Jew who will trade in anything, and live in a way that no other race or section of a race on earth can live. There is a denser population in Petticoat Lane, I verily believe, than anywhere else on the globe, outside of China, and it is all Hebrew.

You should go Sunday morning, which is their especial day, and get there about ten o’clock, to see it in all its glory. All places for selling liquor in London are closed part of the day Sunday, except in this street; but here they are all open and in full blast. Whether there is a special exception made by law, or whether there is a tacit winking at the violation by the authorities because of the religion of the people, I do not know; but it is a fact that in this street the beer shops are open all day and a thriving business they do.

THE HOME OF SECOND-HAND.

It is the busiest place I ever saw. The streets are crowded, not the sidewalks only, but the streets, to the very center. You see no horse-drawn vehicles—it is all people. Barrows and carts drawn by people, men or women, are the only vehicles. There would be no room for any other. The fiery steed attached to a hansom, which shares its driver’s noble ambition to run down a foot passenger, would be tamed in PetticoatLane. The number of opportunities to run down people would embarrass, and, finally, subdue him.

THE SIDEWALK SHOE-STORE.

What do all these people do? It would be easier to answer the question, What don’t they do? They do everything. If there is an article on earth—that is, a second-hand article,—that is not bought and sold in Petticoat Lane on Sunday morning,I have not seen it. You can buy anything you want there, provided you want it second-hand, from a knitting needle to a ship’s anchor. There is nothing in the street that is not second-hand, except the people. They all bear the stamp of originality, every one of them. They are born traders. If a pair of Petticoat Lane Jew twins in a cradle don’t trade teething rings, and attempt to swindle each other, the father and mother drop tears of sorrow over them, and as soon as they are old enough, take them out of the place and apprentice them to a trade. Without this manifestation they would not be considered good enough for Petticoat Lane. Very few have, however, been so apprenticed.

Here is a hideous old woman on the sidewalk with her stock in trade under her eye, and a sharp eye it is, arranged along the curb. What is it? A few dozen or more pairs of boots and shoes, in all stages of dilapidation, carefully polished, and made to look as respectable as possible, any pair of which (by the way, they are not always mates,) you shall buy, if you desire, at any price ranging from a penny to a shilling. No matter what the ancient dame gets for them, she has made a profit. She picked them up on the streets, save a few that she may have borrowed when the owner was not looking. What anybody wants of these remnants, these ghosts of foot wear, I can’t conceive. But she sells them. The trade is consummated easily after the chaffering is over with. The purchaser pays the woman, and sheds the worse ones he has on, and puts on his acquisition, and wends his way. Probably in an hour he would be glad to trade back, but it is too late.

Next to her stands a cart, which is a portable hardware store. There are hinges, nails, all second-hand, carpenter’s tools, axes, locks, keys, and all sorts of iron-mongery, and he sells, too. Somebody wants these goods, and he gets his price. As these things are collected as were the boots, the vender is happy at every pennyworth he sells.

THE CLOTHING DEALER.

Here is a clothing merchant with his stock laid conveniently on the sidewalk. It is a motley mass, and his method of disposing of it is precisely the same as that of the second-hand clothing dealer the world over. I don’t know as these dealers rise to the sublime height of the New York Chatham streetJew, who claimed that a villainous green coat was made for General Grant, but that he wouldn’t have it because the velvet on the collar was too fine for his taste, but they approach it. He has everything that one can conceive of. There are flunkeys’ uniforms, sailors’ jackets, worn-out dress coats that once figured in the best society, but they decayed, and went down and down through all the grades of society, till they finally landed in Petticoat Lane, where they will be sold for a shilling, and the purchaser will tear the tails off as useless encumbrances that give no warmth and are simply in the way, and comfortable jackets will be made of them.

“SHEAP CLODINK!”

Under this head I might ring inHamlet’ssoliloquy about the dust of great men stopping cracks, and preach a very pretty sermon on the mutability of human affairs, but I won’t.Petticoat Lane is not exactly the place for philosophizing, nor will it be for me till I get its smell out of my nostrils. Visiting Petticoat Lane is very much like eating onions—you carry the taste with you a long time, which is a blessing—for those who like onions. The onion is an economical vegetable at any price. It may come high to begin with, but it lasts a long time.

I saw General’s uniforms, American sack-coats, trowsers that may have graced the legs of royalty, and a great many that had not, there not being many of the royalty. There were French blouses, police uniforms, Irish knee-breeches, everything. One coat I saw sold for a penny, the vender originally asking two shillings for it.

Next to this merchant was a man who had an assortment of sewing machines—Wheeler & Wilson, Wilcox & Gibbs, the Domestic, Singer—all the American machines were represented, and he sold them, too. People come there to buy these things. They went as low as three dollars, and as high as five. One bloated aristocrat, who was particular as to appearances, actually paid seven dollars for a Wheeler & Wilson, and was not above carrying it off himself.

In Petticoat Lane they don’t have wagons to deliver your purchases as they do in Regent street and elsewhere, nor do they sell on time. You buy, and pay for what you buy, and to prevent mistakes you pay for your goods just before you get them. It’s a habit they have.

The furniture stores—all on the sidewalk—are curiosities. It would delight a gatherer-up of unconsidered trifles to see one of them. I did not notice a whole piece of furniture in the lot. There was either a leg gone, or two legs, or the top, or the side, something must be gone. But the dealer didn’t mind that. “You see, ma teer, all you hef to do ish to get dot leg put on, and its shoost ash goot as new, efery bit.” Bureaus with missing drawers, tables with three legs where four were essential, chairs with the top, bottom and legs gone; in short, everything that was broken and condemned as useless by everybody finds its last resting-place here. Surely there can be no lower depth for the disabled.

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