ermini.

'Tis a motley company, you see, which comes and goes by the half-penny
boat. Here is a Temple barrister, with his red-taped brief under his
arm, and at his heels follows a plasterer, and a tiler's labourer with
a six-foot chimney-pot upon his shoulders. There goes a
foreigner--foreigners like to have things cheap--with a bushy black
beard and a pale face, moustached and whiskered to the eyes, and
puffing a volume of smoke from his invisible mouth; and there is a
washer-woman, with a basket of clothes weighing a hundredweight.
Yonder young fellow, with the dripping sack on his back, is staggering
under a load of oysters from Billingsgate, and he has got to wash them
and sell them for three a penny, and see them swallowed one at a time,
before his work will be done for the day--and behind him is a comely
lassie, with a monster oil-glazed sarcophagus-looking milliner's
basket, carrying home a couple of bonnets to a customer. See! there is
lame Jack, who sweeps the crossing in the borough, followed by a lady
with her 'six years' darling of a pigmy size,' whom she calls 'Little
Popps,' both hurrying home to dinner after a morning's shopping. All
these, and a hundred others of equally varied description, go off on
the landing-stage, whence they will have to pay their obolus to the
Charon of the Thames ere they are swallowed up in the living tide that
rolls along the Strand from morn to night.

Now, if we mean to go, we had better get on board, for in another
minute the deck will be covered, and we shall not find room to stand.
That's right; make sure of a seat while you may! How they swarm on
board, and what a choice sample they present of the mixed multitude of
London! The deck is literally jammed with every variety of the
pedestrian population--red-breasted soldiers from the barracks,
glazed-hatted policemen from the station, Irish labourers and their
wives, errand-boys with notes and packages, orange-girls with empty
baskets, working-men out for a mouthful of air, and idle boys out for
a 'spree'--men with burdens to carry, and men with hardly a rag to
cover them; unctuous Jews, jabbering Frenchmen, and drowsy-looking
Germans--on they flock, squeezing through the gangway, or clambering
over the bulwarks, while the little vessel rolls and lurches till the
water laves the planks on which you stand. In three minutes from her
arrival she has discharged her old cargo, and is crammed to
overflowing with a new one. 'Bac