A Plague of Peddlers

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

“ REMOTE, unfriended, solitary, slow,” I murmur reflectively. “ RePeddlers, mote ” we certainly are, Heaven be praised ! from city sights and sounds ; “ slow,” yes, if you like, but “ unfriended, solitary,” never, while the unending procession of peddlers wends through the summer land. Before our doors lies the shining sea, “ the path of the bold ; ” behind us the dusty highway, path of the undefeated, undismayed vender of small wares, mostly things which, as Charles Lamb said of the treasures his sister would transport from one abode to another, “the most necessitous person could never want.” It is a militant tribe early upon the warpath, and while the “ top of the morning ” is still making glad our hearts, come the dark-eyed, sombre Italian hucksters, one following close upon the heels of another, and offering in broken English all known fruits and vegetables, except possibly the very one for which our souls long.

But what has become of the gayly clad, festa-loving Italian peasant of song and story ? One meets him on the sunny roads of Italy with his white Tuscan oxen, but he drives no huckster’s cart on this side the sea. Once he has crossed the ocean, the dolce far niente phase of existence lies behind him, and “ hustling ” and the “ strenuous life ” become the order of the new day. We fall into chat with our peanut man, who is all smiles and shrugs, showing his flashing white teeth as he talks. Near Napoli was his home. “ Were we ever there ?” “Yes.” And he tells us just the spot on the sloping sides of Vesuvio where his home lay. “ Will he go back ? ” “ Oh no, America is better.” His peanuts seem to sell, and he is not, apparently, in the plight of his push-cart brother, whose bitter plaint has become a classic, “What I maka on da peanut I losa on da dam banan’.”

Now, the morning being still young, comes the youth with strident voice who puts us in touch with what to us, in our uneager life, seems an insanely active world. He is selling metropolitan dailies to eke out the slender resources needful to complete his Law School course. With such a voice must Macbeth’s raven have croaked “ the fatal entrance of Duncan.” We wish our embryo lawyer well, but hope that he may never be called to lift up his voice for the oppressed. As the morning wears on appears a “ Reverend ” somebody of somewhere peddling, Heaven save the mark ! his own poems. The price, I say, is modest, five cents a copy. “Wait,” replies our friend the author, an author beloved on both sides of the sea, who is tarrying with us for the day, “you will not think so when you have read his verse.” I do not. Here are lines, perhaps the worst of twentythree stanzas, from In Memoriam, commemorating those who lost their lives in a trolley accident. They do not remotely suggest Tennyson. Thus runs the verse:—

Would it make any impression on our reverend poet if he knew that he was trying to dispose of his wares to one of the distinguished littérateurs of the day ? Probably not. The dauntless intrepidity of a poet who vends his creations from door to door would hardly quail at such a contretemps. At all events he passes on unknowing; unknowing, too, that he is adding to the gayety of nations.

Papers and poems having furnished more or less nutriment for the interior of our heads, along comes a friendly, gay soul who would like to supply nourishing washes for their exterior improvement. Truth to tell, the Dominie, one of our inmates and intimates, is a shining mark for such ministrations. “ Hair coming out ? ” says our new peddler, a woman this time, brisk and laconic, with a suggestion of success won by hard work. Her prices are prohibitive, and we tell her so. But she laughs us to scorn as one who knows she has a good thing. “ No,” she chirps, “ I never come down on my prices. I’m not lugging this heavy bag about all day for only seven dollars.” So we part company, the ever widening partings of our unfortunate heads unrefreshed by Madame’s hair vigor.

Last of all upon the scene, while the “ moonglade ” shimmers across the water, come the wandering peddlers of music, whose playing seems, alack, to sensitive ears,

Their ministrations finished and paid for, we sleepily climb the stair, and as we go out upon our upper balcony for a goodnight look at the purple-blue dome of the sky, and a glance out to the far sea line, while the scent of honeysuckle fills the air, we find it in our hearts to waste no sentimental regrets over Ships that pass in the Night, if only we might be sure that peddlers would pass in the day.