people that an occasional vehicle with difficulty made slow passage.
On the outer edges of the pavement, in front of the busy shops, were
rows of booths, stalls, and harrows, whereon meat, vegetables, fish,
and household requirements of indescribable variety were exposed for
sale. The vendors vied with one another in uproarious advertisement
of their goods. In vociferation the butchers doubtless excelled;
their 'Lovely, lovely, lovely!' and their reiterated 'Buy, buy,
buy!' rang clangorous above the hoarse roaring of costermongers and
the din of those who clattered pots and pans. Here and there meat
was being sold by Dutch auction, a brisk business. Umbrellas,
articles of clothing, quack medicines, were disposed of in the same
way, giving occasion for much coarse humour. The market-night is the
sole out-of-door amusement regularly at hand for London working
people, the only one, in truth, for which they show any real
capacity. Everywhere was laughter and interchange of
good-fellowship. Women sauntered the length of the street and back
again for the pleasure of picking out the best and cheapest bundle
of rhubarb, or lettuce, the biggest and hardest cabbage, the most
appetising rasher; they compared notes, and bantered each other on
purchases. The hot air reeked with odours. From stalls where whelks
were sold rose the pungency of vinegar; decaying vegetables trodden
under foot blended their putridness with the musty smell of
second-hand garments; the grocers' shops were aromatic; above all
was distinguishable the acrid exhalation from the shops where fried
fish and potatoes hissed in boiling grease. There Lambeth's supper
was preparing, to be eaten on the spot, or taken away wrapped in
newspaper. Stewed eels and baked meat pies were discoverable through
the steam of other windows, but the fried fish and potatoes appealed
irresistibly to the palate through the nostrils, and stood first in
popularity.