Cincinnati ham, fat Porterfield, watched over from her
desk by fat Mrs. Porterfield, dumped them on a pair
of glittering brass scales and sent them home to your
kitchen invitingly laid out in a flat wicker basket. If
it were fish--fresh, salt, smoked, or otherwise--to say
nothing of crabs, oysters, clams, and the exclusive and
expensive lobster--it was Codman, a few doors above
Porterfield's, who had them on ice, or in barrels, the
varnished claws of the lobsters thrust out like the hands
of a drowning man.

Were it a question of drugs, there was Pestler, the
apothecary, with his four big green globes illuminated
by four big gas-jets, the joy of the children. A small
fellow this Pestler, with a round head and up-brushed
hair set on a long, thin stem of a neck, the whole growing
out of a pair of narrow shoulders, quite like a tulip
from a glass jar.

And then there were Jarvis, the spectacle man, and
that canny Scotchman Sanderson, the florist, who knew
the difference between roses a week old and roses a
day old, and who had the rare gift of so mixing the two
vintages that hardly enough dead stock was left over
for funerals including those presided over by his fellow
conspirator Digwell, the undertaker, who lived
over his mausoleum of a back room.

And, of course, there were the bakeshop emitting
enticing smells, mostly of currants and burnt sugar,