often compelled to part with them, after an
unfavourable day, at less than prime cost, to prevent a total loss.
Still, there are never wanting men of a speculative turn of mind, and
the cry of 'All a-blowin' an' a-growin'' resounds through the streets
as long as the season supplies flowers to grow and to blow.

The flower-merchant wheels off, having left a good sprinkling of
geraniums in our neighbours' windows; and his cousin-german, 'the
graveller,' comes crawling after him, with his cart and stout horse in
the middle of the road, while he walks on one side of the pavement,
and his assistant on the other. This fellow is rather a singular
character, and one that is to be met with probably nowhere upon the
face of the earth but in the suburbs of London. He is, _par
excellence_, the exponent of a feeling which pervades the popular mind
in the metropolis on the subject of the duty which respectable people
owe to respectability. It is impossible for a housekeeper in a
neighbourhood having any claims to gentility, to escape the
recognition of this feeling in the lower class of industrials. If you
have a broken window in the front of your house, the travelling
glazier thinks, to use his own expression, that _you have a right_ to
have it repaired, and therefore that he, having discovered the
fracture, has a right to the job of mending it. If your bell-handle is
out of order or broken off, the travelling bellman thinks he has a
right to repair it, and bores you, in fact, until you commission him
to do so--and so on. In the same manner, and on the same principle, so
soon as the fine weather sets in, and the front-gardens begin to look
gay, the graveller loads his cart with gravel, and shouldering his
spade, crawls leisurely through the suburbs with his companion,
peering into every garden; and wherever he sees that the walks are
grown dingy or moss-grown, he knocks boldly at the door, and demands
to be set to work in mending your ways. The best thing you can do is
to make the bargain and employ him at once; if not, he will be round
again to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, and bore you into
consenting at last. You live in a respectable house, and you _have a
right_ to keep your garden in a respectable condition--and the
graveller is determined that you shall do so: has he not brought
gravel to the door on purpose? it will cost you but a shilling or two.
Thus he lays down the law in his own mind; and sooner or later, as
s