many large petroleum lamps, or rather torches; for they were without shades or chimneys. One side of the place was filled by three or four large booths, on the outside of which were signs and transparencies; and within each was a noise of hand organs and of brazen instruments of music, so called. On some half a dozen stands in the open air various articles were exposed for sale. In the midst of all this some hundred people or so of the humbler sort were moving quietly about. I had plainly fallen upon the Saturday fair of Warwick and its neighborhood. The people offered little occasion of remark, being generally of that sober, respectable sort which is always uninteresting. The shows proved to be equally dull and decent; and even the vociferations of the showmen at the doors of the booths were remarkable only as evidence of an untiring strength of lungs. Soon, however, I was attracted by the performances of a dealer in crockery, who was disposing of his wares by the process known in England as a Dutch auction. A long, broad deal board, set upon two trestles, and covered with teapots, plates, tumblers, bowls, and piggins, formed his whole establishment. Before him a dozen or two of men and women were gathered in little knots. As I came up he was crying out at the top of his voice in praise of a huge and hideous teapot, which he held aloft. "Two shillins for this helegant harticle! Honly two shillins. You wouldn't get one loike it in Lunnon for arf a crown; not for three shillin. Wouldn't you like it, ma'am? It 'ud look helegant on your tea table." Silence. "Eighteen pence, then, for this lovely teapot! Look hat it!" and he whisked off the lid, and held it and the pot abroad high in air in either hand. "Eighteen pence," silence," and no one wants this splendid teapot at one shilling. Wouldn't you like it, ma'am, for ninepence?" turning to an old woman wrapped in a huge rough shawl. He had found his purchaser. The ninepence went into his pocket, and the teapot disappeared under the shawl. He then went to a pile of plates, of which he took up two, and set them whirling on the tips of his fingers like a conjurer. "Look at them plates; as fine as any one ever eat a dinner off of. Who'll have a dozen of 'em? Only two shillins the dozen.' He shouted awhile, but no notice was taken of his invitation. Then he caught up two or three others, and shuffled them back and forth in his hands as if they were cards, making a great clatter. He flung them up into the air and caught them again. He dashed them down upon the board in seeming recklessness, calling attention to their soundness and strength. "The children couldn't break them plates." But I saw that the skill and dexterity of his handling were such that the crockery was in no real danger. He seemed to wax furious in his excitement; and flinging the plates up into the air one after another caught them again, and kept the round in motion, crying out all the while at the top of his voice. He danced back and forth, addressing himself now to one group and now to another, and gradually diminishing the upset price of his goods until he reached his "very lowest figger." Then he paused; and after a little hesitation one or two women stepped shyly forward and bought half a dozen each. After seeing him make one or two more sales in this manner, I turned away. It was growing late. The people began to disperse. They were putting out the lights in the show booths; and I went to my inn. But something was going on even in Warwick, and my entertainment was better, I am sure, than it would have been at a theater. Among the striking features of old English towns are the massive gates that are found standing in them across some of the principal streets. In olden time almost all these towns were walled. The walls have fallen into decay, and have been removed, but many of the gateways are left standing. Warwick has at least one such, through which I passed several times without observing anything in it to interest me particularly, except its massiveness and its age. But one afternoon, as I was walking out of the town, I saw an exceeding small boy trying to drive an exceeding big swine through this gate. The boy was one of the smallest I ever saw intrusted with any office, the beast was the hugest living pork that has yet come under my observation. He was a very long pig, but he also was a very broad one; surely greater in girth than in length. His hams were so big that as he presented his vast rear to me he seemed to obscure a goodly part of the horizon, and as to the boy, they must for him have blotted out the whole heavens; for the little man's head was not so high as the big beast's back. The group reminded me of Falstaff's exclamation to his dwarfish page, "I do here walk before thee like a sow that hath overwhelmed all her litter but one." Now the pig, for some altogether piggish reason, did not wish to go through the gate. Perhaps he thought it was too small, although armies with banners had gone out of it to battle. He turned his head to one side and the other, willing to take the pathway which passed around the gate, through which his pygmy driver, however, was determined that he should go. Whereat the latter spread out his little hands, and applying them with all his little might to the haunches of the huge creature tried to push him on. He might as well have pushed against the great tower of Warwick Castle. Then he patted the fat white hams, and coaxed and gently urged, but all in vain. Whereupon the dreadful ingenuity of boydom, early developed, came to his aid. Between the enormous haunches of the beast was an absurdly small corkscrew appendage which for any possible use that it could be to such a monster might just as well not have been. It suggested that tails, in the course of evolution, were passing away from pigs in their progress toward some more highly developed animal of the future. But the boy put it to present and effective use. Reaching up to it as I had seen a lad reach to a door knocker, he seized it, and with a hearty good will gave it one more twist than it had, the consequence of which was a swinish squeal and a hurried waddle through the gateway. The contrast between the venerable dignity of this frowning old portal, with its historic suggestions and associations, and the little comedy of boy and pig enacted beneath it seemed to me one of the absurdest sights that I had ever seen. THE RUOSE THAT DECKED HER BREAST. (Dorsetshire Dialect.) BY WILLIAM BARNES. [1800-1886.] POOR Jenny wer her Roberd's bride. She waked aluone wi' eyeballs wet, The jilliflower an' noddin' pink, Var at her weddin' jist avore An' then her cheak wi' youthvul blood A little biaby wi' his fiace, To smile an' nessle in the pliace Wher the ruose did deck her breast. THACKERAY.1 BY JAMES T. FIELDS. (From "Yesterdays with Authors.") [JAMES THOMAS FIELDS: An American publisher and author; born at Portsmouth, N.H., December 31, 1817; died at Boston, April 24, 1881. He entered the employ of a Boston bookseller in 1834, and in 1839 was admitted as a partner of the firm of Ticknor, Reed & Fields, which in 1846 became Ticknor & Fields. In 1847 he visited Europe, making many friends among the leading literary men of the day. He collected, edited, and published the first complete edition of the works of Thomas De Quincey (20 vols., 1858). In 1860 he succeeded Mr. James Russell Lowell as editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and remained as such until his final retirement from business in 1871. He received the degree of A.M. from 1 Copyright, 1871, by James T. Fields. Published by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. |