who
looks like a sick and drunken footman, is selling a snow-white
lap-dog. The old lap-dog whines.

"She told me to sell the nasty thing," says the footman, with a
contemptuous snigger. "She is bankrupt in her old age, has nothing
to eat, and here now is selling her dogs and cats. She cries, and
kisses them on their filthy snouts. And then she is so hard up that
she sells them. 'Pon my soul, it is a fact! Buy it, gentlemen! The
money is wanted for coffee."

But no one laughs. A boy who is standing by screws up one eye and
looks at him gravely with compassion.

The most interesting of all is the fish section. Some dozen peasants
are sitting in a row. Before each of them is a pail, and in each
pail there is a veritable little hell. There, in the thick, greenish
water are swarms of little carp, eels, small fry, water-snails,
frogs, and newts. Big water-beetles with broken legs scurry over
the small surface, clambering on the carp, and jumping over the
frogs. The creatures have a strong hold on life. The frogs climb
on the beetles, the newts on the frogs. The dark green tench, as
more expensive fish, enjoy an exceptional position; they are kept
in a special jar where they can't swim, but still they are not so
cramped. . . .

"The carp is a grand fish! The carp's the fish to keep, your honour,
plague take him! You can keep him for a year in a pail and he'll
live! It's a week since I caught these very fish. I caught them,
sir, in Pererva, and have come from there on foot. The carp are two
kopecks each, the eels are three, and the minnows are ten kopecks
the dozen, plague take them! Five kopecks' worth of minnows, sir?
Won't you take some worms?"

The seller thrusts his coarse rough fingers into the pail and pulls
out of it a soft minnow, or a little carp, the size of a nail.
Fishing lines, hooks, and tackle are laid out near the pails, and
pond-worms glow with a crimson light in the sun.

An old fancier in a fur cap, iron-rimmed spectacles, and goloshes
that look like two dread-noughts, walks about by the waggons of
birds and pails of fish. He is, as they call him here, "a type."
He hasn't a farthing to bless himself with, but in spite of that
he haggles, gets excited, and pesters purchasers with advice. He
has thoroughly examined all the hares, pigeons, and fish; examined
them in every detail, fixed the kind, the age, and the price of
each one of them a good hour ago. He is as interested as a child
in the goldfinc