flaming red shawl, pink ribbons in her bonnet, and the hue of health
on a rather saucy face. She carries a large basket on her left arm,
and in her right hand she displays to general admiration a gorgeous
group of flowers, fashioned twice the size of life, from tissue-paper
of various colours. She lifts up her voice occasionally as she marches
slowly along, singing, in a clear accent: 'Flowers--ornamental papers
for the stove--flowers! paper-flowers!' She is the accredited herald
of summer--a phenomenon, this year, of very late appearance. We should
have seen her six weeks ago, if the summer had not declined to appear
at the usual season. She is the gaudy, party-coloured ephemera of
street commerce, and will disappear from view in a fortnight's time,
to be seen no more until the opening summer of '53. Her wares, which
are manufactured with much taste, and with an eye to the harmony of
colours, are in much request among the genteel housewives of the
suburbs. They are exceedingly cheap, considering the skill which must
be applied in their construction. They are all the work of her own
hands, and have occupied her time and swallowed up her capital for
some months past. She enjoys almost a monopoly in her art, and is not
to be beaten down in the price of her goods. She knows their value,
and is more independent than an artist dares to be in the presence of
a patron. Her productions are a pleasant summer substitute for the
cheerful fire of winter; and it is perhaps well for her that, before
the close of autumn, the faded hues of the flowers, and the harbour
they afford to dust, will convert them into waste paper, in spite of
all the care that may be taken to preserve them.

Paper Poll, as the servants call her, is hardly out of sight, and not
out of hearing, when a young fellow and his wife come clattering along
the pavement, appealing to all who may require their good offices in
the matter of chair-mending. The man is built up in a sort of
cage-work of chairs stuck about his head and shoulders, and his dirty
phiz is only half visible through a kind of grill of legs and
cross-bars. These are partly commissions which, having executed at
home, he is carrying to their several owners. But as everybody does
not choose to trust him away with property, he is ready to execute
orders on the spot; and to this end his wife accompanies him on his
rounds. She is loaded with a small bag of tools suspended at her
waist, and a plentiful s