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The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 - Elia and The Last Essays of Elia by Mary Lamb;Charles Lamb
page 174 of 696 (25%)
who wisheth to dissipate his o'er-night vapours in more grateful
coffee, curses the ungenial fume, as he passeth; but the artisan stops
to taste, and blesses the fragrant breakfast.

This is _Saloop_--the precocious herb-woman's darling--the delight of
the early gardener, who transports his smoking cabbages by break of
day from Hammersmith to Covent-garden's famed piazzas--the delight,
and, oh I fear, too often the envy, of the unpennied sweep. Him
shouldest thou haply encounter, with his dim visage pendent over the
grateful steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin (it will cost thee
but three half-pennies) and a slice of delicate bread and butter (an
added halfpenny)--so may thy culinary fires, eased of the o'er-charged
secretions from thy worse-placed hospitalities, curl up a lighter
volume to the welkin--so may the descending soot never taint thy
costly well-ingredienced soups--nor the odious cry, quickreaching from
street to street, of the _fired chimney_, invite the rattling engines
from ten adjacent parishes, to disturb for a casual scintillation thy
peace and pocket!

I am by nature extremely susceptible of street affronts; the jeers
and taunts of the populace; the low-bred triumph they display over
the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of a gentleman. Yet can I
endure the jocularity of a young sweep with something more than
forgiveness.--In the last winter but one, pacing along Cheapside with
my accustomed precipitation when I walk westward, a treacherous slide
brought me upon my back in an instant. I scrambled up with pain and
shame enough--yet outwardly trying to face it down, as if nothing had
happened--when the roguish grin of one of these young wits encountered
me. There he stood, pointing me out with his dusky finger to the
mob, and to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) in particular, till
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