mossy gardens at the
back, glowing with nasturtiums, fuchsias, scarlet geraniums, "bloody
warriors," snapdragons, and dahlias, this floral blaze being backed by
crusted grey stone-work remaining from a yet remoter Casterbridge than
the venerable one visible in the street. The old-fashioned fronts of
these houses, which had older than old-fashioned backs, rose sheer
from the pavement, into which the bow windows protruded like bastions,
necessitating a pleasing chassez-dechassez movement to the time-pressed
pedestrian at every few yards. He was bound also to evolve
other Terpsichorean figures in respect of door-steps, scrapers,
cellar-hatches, church buttresses, and the overhanging angles of walls
which, originally unobtrusive, had become bow-legged and knock-kneed.

In addition to these fixed obstacles which spoke so cheerfully of
individual unrestraint as to boundaries, movables occupied the path and
roadway to a perplexing extent. First the vans of the carriers in
and out of Casterbridge, who hailed from Mellstock, Weatherbury, The
Hintocks, Sherton-Abbas, Kingsbere, Overcombe, and many other towns and
villages round. Their owners were numerous enough to be regarded as a
tribe, and had almost distinctiveness enough to be regarded as a race.
Their vans had just arrived, and were drawn up on each side of the
street in close file, so as to form at places a wall between the
pavement and the roadway. Moreover every shop pitched out half its
contents upon trestles and boxes on the kerb, extending the display
each week a little further and further into the roadway, despite the
expostulations of the two feeble old constables, until there remained
but a tortuous defile for carriages down the centre of the street, which
afforded fine opportunities for skill with the reins. Over the pavement
on the sunny side of the way hung shopblinds so constructed as to give
the passenger's hat a smart buffet off his head, as from the unseen
hands of Cranstoun's Goblin Page, celebrated in romantic lore.

Horses for sale were tied in rows, their forelegs on the pavement, their
hind legs in the street, in which position they occasionally nipped
little boys by the shoulder who were passing to school. And any inviting
recess in front of a house that had been modestly kept back from the
general line was utilized by pig-dealers as a pen for their stock.

The yeomen, farmers, dairymen, and townsfolk, who came to transact
business in these ancient s