To reach
this amazing edifice, with too much haste for more than a momentary
glimpse of its harrowing exterior, and to get away from it, with a speed
as little complimentary to the charms of its shadow, are, apparently,
the two great and exclusive objects of the thousands swarming down and
up the narrow street all through a day. Some twenty odd boot-shops, all
next-door-but-one to each other, startlingly alike in their despondent
outer appearances, and uniformly conducted by embittered elderly men of
savage aspect--seem to sue in vain from year to year for at least one
customer; and as many other melancholy dens for the sale of exactly the
things no one but a madman would want to buy while on his way to a
Post-Office, or from it, appear to wait as hopelessly for the first
purchaser. There are, too, no end of open-air dealers in such curious
postal incidentals as ghastly apples, insulting neck-ties, and
impracticable pocket-combs; to whom, possibly, an unwholesome errand boy
may be seen applying for a bargain about once in the lifetime of an
ordinary _habitue_ of the street, but whose general wares were never
seen selling to the extent of four shillings by any living observer.
Still, with an affront to human credulity of which only newspapers are
capable, it has been declared, in print, that there are bootmakers and
apple-women of Nassau who continually buy choice up-town corner-lots
with their profits; and, if it may be therefrom inferred that the other
trades of the street do as incredibly well, it were wise, perhaps, to be
further convinced that people have a well-established habit of
stealthily laying in their new raiment, fruit, and toilet articles while
going for their business-mails, and at once relinquish all earthly
confidence in the senses obstinately refuting the theory.
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