Street-Corner Men.
MONG the varied occupations of the people of a great city, and the many diverse and curious ways of getting a living therein, perhaps none are more interesting to study than the irregular individuals who may be seen at various street corners, and almost on any night of the week, in the various High streets and main thoroughfares of the suburbs, cajoling, lecturing, flattering, preaching, and dogmatically and assertively declaring, by all and every kind of method, the advantages to the public of an investment in their particular kind of goods or a subscription towards the open-air entertainment they provide. The copper wire-worker, who with aid of pliers rapidly evolves models of bicycles, ordinaries and safeties, flower-stands, vases, card-baskets, &c.; the glass collar-stud and inexhaustible glass fountain-pen seller; the little old man who, with candle and old kettle,
"Two sticks a penny."
constantly pierces holes in the latter to mend with his patent solder, "Two sticks a penny, any child can do it"; the public benefactor and proprietor of a patent corn solvent; the conjuring-cards seller, "any one, man, woman, or child, can perform these ere tricks the same has wot hi do"; the boot-blacking stall-keeper; the silverer of old brass articles; the herb-vendor of penny packets to mix with tobacco to destroy the ill effects of nicotine, with printed placard of illustrious personages’ opinions of smoking; the purveyor of old monthly parts of various illustrated magazines and periodicals, the umbrella seller, the conjuror, the open-air reciter; these and many others, with every kind of dodge and manœuvre to extract pence from the pockets of the people, are the street-corner men of this great metropolis.
A curious fact about these itinerants is observable; the majority are selling medicines or compounds to cure the ills of the flesh, presumably the needs and necessities of the people in the direction of cheap medicines receiving more attention, and the trade being more lucrative, than the retailing of articles of a domestic character. Their methods of attracting attention are various. One well-known character about the London streets regularly prefaces the sale of his patent digestive cure-all, kill-pain, stomach-regulating tonic with a rather elaborate experiment with two wine-glasses, apparently clean and empty, somewhat on the lines of the conjuror’s manipulation of a variety of drinks.
A little cold water poured into one makes no change, but with the other a muddy, dirty-red coloured liquid is the result, typical of a disordered state of health.
