"Living merchandise."
may assume that boys still keep guinea-pigs, although for the advanced boy of to-day such pets may well seem too slow. They are most unintelligent, eat their young, and, so long as plenty of parsley is forthcoming, think very little about their owners. Once having failed to hold one up by the tail till his eyes dropped out, one would expect a boy's interest in these animals to vanish, but a boy's will is the wind's will, and
the thoughts of youth are rum, rum thoughts, as Longfellow ought to have said. Wherefore they still keep guinea-pigs. Probably they still keep green lizards and snakes; they used to do so. A friend of mine has to
try to earn his living as a barrister, which is a very sad thing. It is all owing to his keeping snakes as a boy, and letting a few of them get adrift in the house of a maiden aunt. She left the premises at a moment's notice, and sold the furniture. This was only funny. Then she left all her money to a missionary society, and that was serious.
"Miles of geese and turkeys."
Leadenhall Market, as one used to know it, is going, going; but let us hope it will never be quite gone. Long may the living merchandise resist the inroads of serried ranks of hooks, whereon hang many, many miles of plucked geese and turkeys; birds of no feather flocking together to minister to man's alimentary desires, instead of to his love for those weaker creatures which are so many ages behind him in the tale of evolution, or which have branched off by the way!
