that in a moment more I should have trodden upon without seeing,
rose up at my feet with a cry of loneliness and houselessness,
struck out of it by the bell, the like of which I never heard. We
then stood face to face looking at one another, frightened by one
another. The creature was like a beetle-browed hair-lipped youth
of twenty, and it had a loose bundle of rags on, which it held
together with one of its hands. It shivered from head to foot, and
its teeth chattered, and as it stared at me – persecutor, devil,
ghost, whatever it thought me – it made with its whining mouth as
if it were snapping at me, like a worried dog. Intending to give
this ugly object money, I put out my hand to stay it – for it
recoiled as it whined and snapped – and laid my hand upon its
shoulder. Instantly, it twisted out of its garment, like the young
man in the New Testament, and left me standing alone with its rags
in my hands.
Covent-garden Market, when it was market morning, was wonderful
company. The great waggons of cabbages, with growers’ men and boys
lying asleep under them, and with sharp dogs from market-garden
neighbourhoods looking after the whole, were as good as a party.
But one of the worst night sights I know in London, is to be found
in the children who prowl about this place; who sleep in the
baskets, fight for the offal, dart at any object they think they
can lay their their thieving hands on, dive under the carts and
barrows, dodge the constables, and are perpetually making a blunt
pattering on the pavement of the Piazza with the rain of their
naked feet. A painful and unnatural result comes of the comparison
one is forced to institute between the growth of corruption as
displayed in the so much improved and cared for fruits of the
earth, and the growth of corruption as displayed in these all
uncared for (except inasmuch as ever-hunted) savages.
There was early coffee to be got about Covent-garden Market, and
that was more company – warm company, too, which was better. Toast
of a very substantial quality, was likewise procurable: though the
towzled-headed man who made it, in an inner chamber within the
coffee-room, hadn’t got his coat on yet, and was so heavy with
sleep that in every interval of toast and coffee he went off anew
behind the partition into complicated cross-roads of choke and
snore, and lost his way directly. Into one of these establishments
(among the earliest) near Bow-street, there came one morning as I
sat over my houseless cup, pondering where to go next, a man in a
high and long snuff-coloured coat, and shoes, and, to the best of
my belief, nothing else but a hat, who took out of his hat a large
cold meat pudding; a meat pudding so large that it was a very tight
fit, and brought the lining of the hat out with it. This
mysterious man was known by his pudding, for on his entering, the
man of sleep brought him a pint of hot tea, a small loaf, and a
large knife and fork and plate. Left to himself in his box, he
stood the pudding on the bare table, and, instead of cutting it,
stabbed it, overhand, with the knife, like a mortal enemy; then
took the knife out, wiped it on his sleeve, tore the pudding
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
asunder with his fingers, and ate it all up. The remembrance of
this man with the pudding remains with me as the remembrance of the
most spectral person my houselessness encountered. Twice only was
I in that establishment, and twice I saw him stalk in (as I should
say, just out of bed, and presently going back to bed), take out
his pudding, stab his pudding, wipe the dagger, and eat his pudding
all up. He was a man whose figure promised cadaverousness, but who
had an excessively red face, though shaped like a horse’s. On the
second occasion of my seeing him, he said huskily to the man of