Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 94, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1906 — OLD STREET CRIES. [ARTICLE]

OLD STREET CRIES.

Somewhere about a score of years ago there was published in London a tiny volume of most unusual interest to students of old-time manners and customs. It was called “Old London Street Cries,” and contained several hundred familiar calls, beginning with the middle of the fifteenth century, In which, as In a mirror, one can see reflected the life of the common people through the years—what they ate and drank and wore, their furniture and amusements, the toys their children played with, and their luxuries, long ■lnce become commonest necessities. A walk through London streets In those days must have been a veritable running of the gauntlet. A few specimens of the calls which besieged the traveller’s ears will suffice. ••Buy my dish of great eeles!” “Buy • flue slnglng-blrd!” “Buy my wax or wafers!” "Hot baked wordeus (stewed pears) 1” "Knlveß or scissors to grind!” "Buy my four ropes of onions!” “Buy a foote-stoole 1" “Ribbons a groat a yard 1” “Buy a horn book!” “Songs, 'three yards a penny!” “Holly and mlstle(fe!” “London’s Gazette here I” “Buy my nice drops, twenty a penny, peppermint drops!” “Troop one (toy hobby-horses)!" “Three'rows a penny pins, short whites and middle—lngs!” Nor were the eager merchants content with verbal solicitation. The bewildered wayfarer was often so “pullhauled” by one after another that resistance must have been well-nigh Impossible. But times change, and street life with them. A generation ago a few lineal descendants of the old London hucksters called up and down our streets. Now the rags and bottle men have disappeared, the "chwurs-grinder” merely rings a bell, venders of fruits and and vegetables have been silenced by law In many cities, and, save for the sidewalk toys and the holly and mistletoe of Christmas time, the newsboy Is sole Inheritor of all the street cries. Less picturesque? Possibly. But one has only to spend an hour among the takers of a country fair to realize that even the strenuous life of the twentieth century has Its advantages. Many a man's so-called dignified silence Is due to the lamentable fact that be doesn’t know what to say. Every bore thinks be is pestered by • lot of bore*.