rrying on his back a monstrous pack of umbrellas. He rang
a bell monotonously and professed himself a mender of umbrellas. He can
hardly have expected to find a customer in the crowd. Even a blinking
eye--and these street merchants are shrewd in these matters--must have told
him that in all this hurrying mass of people, the thoughts of no one ran
toward umbrellas. Rather, I think that he was taking an hour from the
routine of the day. He had trod the profitable side streets until truantry
had taken him. But he still made a pretext of working at his job and called
his wares to ease his conscience from idleness. Once when an unusually
bright beam of sunlight fell from between the clouds, he tilted up his hat
to get the warmth and I thought him guilty of a skip and syncopation in the
ringing of his bell, as if he too twitched pleasantly with the Spring and
his old sap was stirred.

I like these persons who ply their trades upon the sidewalk. My hatter--the
fellow who cleans my straw hat each Spring--is a partner of a bootblack.
Over his head as he putters with his soap and brushes, there hangs a rusty
sign proclaiming that he is famous for his cleaning all round the world. He
is so modest in his looks that I have wondered whether he really can read
the sign. Or perhaps like a true merchant, he is not squeamish at the
praise. As I have not previously been aware that any of his profession ever
came to general fame except the Mad Hatter of Wonderland, I have squinted
sharply at him to see if by chance it might be he, but there are no marks
even of a distant kinship. He does, however, bring my hat to a marvellous
whiteness and it may be true that he has really tended heads that are now
gone beyond Constantinople.

Bootblacks have a sense of rhythm unparalleled. Of this the long rag is
their instrument. They draw it once or twice across the shoe to set the key
and then they go into a swift and pattering melody. If there is an unusual
genius in the bootblack--some remnant of ancient Greece--he plays such a
lively tune that one's shoulders jig to it. If there were a dryad or other
such nimble creature on the street, she would come leaping as though
Orpheus strummed a tune, but the dance is too fast for our languid northern
feet.

Nowhere are apples redder than on a cart. Our hearts go out to Adam in the
hour of his temptation. I know one lady of otherwise careful appetite who
even leans toward dates if she may buy them from a ca