ABSTRACT
It is immaterial whether we thread our way from the Terminus in Fenchurch-street, to the purlieus of Shoreditch and Spitalfields, branch off to the Tottenham-court-road, or return by Oxford-street into Crawford-street and the Edgeware-road, the scene in each, on Saturday nights, is the same – the same multitudes, the same street-cries, the same confusion. The same description of miscellaneous merchandise, the same babble of buyers and vendors, of beggars and ballad-singers, beset us on every side. The very organ-boys, blind performers on the violoncello, and men without legs with clarionets, seem so many duplicates of one another. A double glare of light shines out from gin-palaces and butchers’ shops; the windows of the second-rate drapery and bonnet warehouses in the vicinity, look gayer than by day, and exhibit their brightest ribbons, gaudiest shawls, and smartest gown-pieces, in order to lure some portion of the week’s hard earnings from the female portion of the passers-by. And hard indeed is the struggle of many a simple housewife (whose family wants forbid the smallest indulgence of her own) to forego their various attractions, especially when strengthened, as they ordinarily are, by sundry placards, proclamatory of “Ruinously cheap prices!” “Paralysing reduction!!” “Appalling sacrifice!!!” &c.
