I have wondered as I have observed the housewives lingering at their windows—­for my window also looks upon the park—­I have wondered that these melodious street cries are not used generally for calling the wares of wider sale.  If a radish can be so proclaimed, there might be a lilt devised in praise of other pleasing merceries—­a tripping pizzicato for laces and frippery—­a brave trumpeting for some newest cereal.  And should not the latest book—­if it be a tale of love, for these I am told are best offered to the public in the Spring (sad tales are best for winter)—­should not a tale of love be heralded through the city by the singing of a ballad, with a melting tenor in the part?  In old days a gaudy rogue cried out upon the broader streets that jugglers had stretched their rope in the market-place, but when the bears came to town, the news was piped even to the narrowest lanes that house-folk might bring their pennies.

With my thoughts set on the Spring I chanced to walk recently where the theatres are thickest.  It was on a Saturday afternoon and the walk was crowded with amusement seekers.  Presently in the press I observed a queer old fellow carrying on his back a monstrous pack of umbrellas.  He rang a bell monotonously and professed himself a mender of umbrellas.  He can hardly have expected to find a customer in the crowd.  Even a blinking eye—­and these street merchants are shrewd in these matters—­must have told him that in all this hurrying mass of people, the thoughts of no one ran toward umbrellas.  Rather, I think that he was taking an hour from the routine of the day.  He had trod the profitable side streets until truantry had taken him.  But he still made a pretext of working at his job and called his wares to ease his conscience from idleness.  Once when an unusually bright beam of sunlight fell from between the clouds, he tilted up his hat to get the warmth and I thought him guilty of a skip and syncopation in the ringing of his bell, as if he too twitched pleasantly with the Spring and his old sap was stirred.

I like these persons who ply their trades upon the sidewalk.  My hatter—­the fellow who cleans my straw hat each Spring—­is a partner of a bootblack.  Over his head as he putters with his soap and brushes, there hangs a rusty sign proclaiming that he is famous for his cleaning all round the world.  He is so modest in his looks that I have wondered whether he really can read the sign.  Or perhaps like a true merchant, he is not squeamish at the praise.  As I have not previously been aware that any of his profession ever came to general fame except the Mad Hatter of Wonderland, I have squinted sharply at him to see if by chance it might be he, but there are no marks even of a distant kinship.  He does, however, bring my hat to a marvellous whiteness and it may be true that he has really tended heads that are now gone beyond Constantinople.