It was on a warm sunny morning very early, for we were up and away
betimes, that Mr. Schmidt and I and Wholesome took our first walk
together through the old market-sheds. We turned into Market street at
Fourth street, whence the sheds ran downward to the Delaware. The
pictures they gave me to store away in my mind are all of them vivid
enough, but none more so than that which I saw with my two friends on
the first morning when we wandered through them together.

On either side of the street the farmers' wagons stood backed up against
the sidewalk, each making a cheap shop, by which stood the sturdy owners
under the trees, laughing and chaffering with their customers. We
ourselves turned aside and walked down the centre of the street under
the sheds. On either side at the entry of the market odd business was
being plied, the traders being mostly colored women with bright chintz
dresses and richly-colored bandanna handkerchiefs coiled turban-like
above their dark faces. There were rows of roses in red pots, and
venders of marsh calamus, and "Hot corn, sah, smokin' hot," and
"Pepperpot, bery nice," and sellers of horse-radish and
snapping-turtles, and of doughnuts dear to grammar-school lads. Within
the market was a crowd of gentlefolks, followed by their black servants
with baskets--the elderly men in white or gray stockings, with
knee-buckles, the younger in very tight nankeen breeches and pumps,
frilled shirts and ample cravats and long blue swallow-tailed coats with
brass buttons. Ladies whose grandchildren go no more to market were
there in gowns with strangely short waists and broad gypsy-bonnets, with
the flaps tied down by wide ribbons over the ears. It was a busy and
good-humored throng.

"Ah," said Schmidt, "what color!" and he stood quite wrapped in the joy
it gave him looking at the piles of fruit, where the level morning