FullReads

But I would not willingly keep a second-hand bookshop. It is too cluttered a business. There is too free a democracy between good and bad. It was Dean Swift who declared that collections of books made him melancholy, “where the best author is as much squeezed and as obscure as a porter at a coronation.” Nor is it altogether reassuring for one who is himself by way of being an author to view the certain neglect that awaits him when attics are cleared at last. There is too leathery a smell upon the premises, a thick deposit of mortality. I draw a deep breath when I issue on the street, grateful for the sunlight and the wind. However, I frequently put my head in at Pratt’s around the corner, sometimes by chance when the family are assembled for their supper in one of the book alcoves. They have swept back a litter of historians to make room for the tray of dishes. To cut them from the shop they have drawn a curtain in front of their nook, but I can hear the teapot bubbling on the counter. There is, also, a not unsavory smell which, if my old nose retains its cunning, is potato stew, fetched up from the kitchen. If you seek Gibbon now, Pratt’s face will show like a withered moon between the curtains and will request you to call later when the dishes have been cleared.

No one works in cleaner produce than carpenters. They are for the most part a fatherly whiskered tribe and they eat their lunches neatly from a pail, their backs against the wall, their broad toes upturned. I look suspiciously on painters, however, who present themselves for work like slopped and shoddy harlequins, and although I have myself passed a delightful afternoon painting a wooden fence at the foot of the garden–and been scraped afterwards–I would not wish to be of their craft.

But perhaps one is of restless habit and a peripatetic occupation may be recommended. For a bachelor of small expense, at a hazard, a wandering fruit and candy cart offers the venture and chance of unfamiliar journeys. There is a breed of lollypop on a stick that shows a handsome profit when the children come from school. Also, at this minute, I hear below me on the street the flat bell of the scissors-grinder. I know not what skill is required, yet it needs a pretty eye and even foot. The ragman takes to an ancestral business and chants the ancient song of his fathers. When distance has somewhat muffled its nearer sharpness, the song bears a melody unparalleled among tradesmen’s cries. Window glass, too, is hawked pleasantly from house to house and requires but a knife and putty. In the spring the vegetable vender, standing in his wagon, utters melodious sounds that bring the housewives to their windows. Once, also, by good luck, I fell into acquaintance with a fellow who peddled brooms and dustpans along the countryside. He was hung both front and back with cheap commodities–a necklace of scrubbing brushes–tins jangling against his knees. A very kitchen had become biped. A pantry had gone on pilgrimage. Except for dogs, which seemed maddened by his strange appearance, it was, he informed me, an engaging livelihood for a man who chafed indoors. Or for one of dreamy disposition the employment of a sandwich man, with billboards fore and aft, offers a profitable repose. Sometimes several of these philosophers journey together up the street in a crowded hour, one behind another with slow introspective step, as befits their high preoccupation.

Or one has an ear, and the street-organ commends itself. Observe the musician at the corner, hat in hand and smiling! Let but a curtain stir and his eye will catch it. He hears a falling penny as ’twere any nightingale. His tunes are the herald of the gaudy spring. His are the dancing measures of the sunlight. And is anyone a surer judge of human nature? He allows dyspeptics to slink along the fence. Those of bilious aspect may go their ways unchallenged. Spare me those, he says, who have not music in their souls: they are fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. It was with a flute that the poet Goldsmith starved his way through France. Yet the flute is a cold un-stirring instrument. He would have dined the oftener had he pitched upon a street-organ.