The Journal of a Disappointed Man

"No wonder you're so hard up and 'ave got to take in lodgers. What's yer name?" "John Jones," in a demure wheedling voice. "Hoo--that's not your name in your own bloody country--I expect it's Hullabullinsky." "Do you know what my name really is?" "No." "It's Assenheimopoplocatdwizlinsky Kovorod." (Loud laughter.) "I shall call you 'ass' for short." I was laughing loudly at these two clowns and the skipper observing as much, shouted out to me,-- "Parlez-vous Francois, M'sieur?" "Oui, oui," said I. "Ah! lah, you're one of us--oh! what a game! what a bees' nest," and all the time he went on selling caps and chucking them at the purchasers. Perhaps one of the most extraordinary things I saw was a stream of young men who, one after another, came up to a stall, paid a penny and swallowed a glass of "nerve tonic"--a green liquid syphoned out of a large jar--warranted a safe cure for "Inward weakness, slightest flurry or body oppressed." Another man was pulling teeth and selling tooth powder. Some of the little urchins' teeth, after he had cleaned them as a demonstration, were much whiter than their faces or his. This was "the original Chas. Assenheim." Mrs. Meyers, "not connected with any one else of the same name in the Lane" was selling eels at 2d., 3d. and 6d. and doing a brisk trade too. But I should go on for hours if I were to tell everything seen in this remarkable lane during an hour and a half on a Sunday morning. Each stall-holder sells only one kind of article--caps or clocks or songs, braces, shawls, indecent literature, concertinas, gramophones, coats, pants, reach-me-downs, epergnes. The thoroughfare was crowded with people (I saw two Lascars in red fez caps) inspecting the goods displayed and attentively observed by numerous policemen. The alarm clocks were all going off, each gramophone was working a record (a different one!) and every tradesman shouting his wares--a perfect pandemonium.