Having neglected to do so, I remember little more than a
confusion of unwashed and shabbily dressed people, intermixed with some
smarter figures, but, on the whole, presenting a mobbish appearance
such as we never see in our own country. It taught me to understand why
Shakspeare, in speaking of a crowd, so often alludes to its attribute
of evil odor. The common people of England, I am afraid, have no daily
familiarity with even so necessary a thing as a washbowl, not to mention
a bathing-tub. And furthermore, it is one mighty difference between
them and us, that every man and woman on our side of the water has a
working-day suit and a holiday suit, and is occasionally as fresh as a
rose, whereas, in the good old country, the griminess of his labor or
squalid habits clings forever to the individual, and gets to be a part
of his personal substance. These are broad facts, involving great
corollaries and dependencies. There are really, if you stop to think
about it, few sadder spectacles in the world than a ragged coat or a
soiled and shabby gown, at a festival.
This unfragrant crowd was exceedingly dense, being welded together,
as it were, in the street through which we strove to make our way. On
either side were oyster-stands, stalls of oranges, (a very prevalent
fruit in England, where they give the withered ones a guise of freshness
by boiling them,) and booths covered with old sail-cloth, in which the
commodity that most attracted the eye was gilt gingerbread.
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