’Twas noonday in Chepe.  High Tide in the mighty River City!—­its banks wellnigh overflowing with the myriad-waved Stream of Man!  The toppling wains, bearing the produce of a thousand marts; the gilded equipage of the Millionary; the humbler, but yet larger vehicle from the green metropolitan suburbs (the Hanging Gardens of our Babylon), in which every traveller might, for a modest remuneration, take a republican seat; the mercenary caroche, with its private freight; the brisk curricle of the letter-carrier, robed in royal scarlet:  these and a thousand others were laboring and pressing onward, and locked and bound and hustling together in the narrow channel of Chepe.  The imprecations of the charioteers were terrible.  From the noble’s broidered hammer-cloth, or the driving-seat of the common coach, each driver assailed the other with floods of ribald satire.  The pavid matron within the one vehicle (speeding to the Bank for her semestrial pittance) shrieked and trembled; the angry Dives hastening to his office (to add another thousand to his heap,) thrust his head over the blazoned panels, and displayed an eloquence of objurgation which his very Menials could not equal; the dauntless street urchins, as they gayly threaded the Labyrinth of Life, enjoyed the perplexities and quarrels of the scene, and exacerbated the already furious combatants by their poignant infantile satire.  And the Philosopher, as he regarded the hot strife and struggle of these Candidates in the race for Gold, thought with a sigh of the Truthful and the Beautiful, and walked on, melancholy and serene.

’Twas noon in Chepe.  The ware-rooms were thronged.  The flaunting windows of the mercers attracted many a purchaser:  the glittering panes behind which Birmingham had glazed its simulated silver, induced rustics to pause:  although only noon, the savory odors of the Cook Shops tempted the over hungry citizen to the bun of Bath, or to the fragrant potage that mocks the turtle’s flavor—­the turtle!  O dapibus suprimi grata testudo Jovis!  I am an Alderman when I think of thee!  Well:  it was noon in Chepe.

But were all battling for gain there?  Among the many brilliant shops whose casements shone upon Chepe, there stood one a century back (about which period our tale opens) devoted to the sale of Colonial produce.  A rudely carved image of a negro, with a fantastic plume and apron of variegated feathers, decorated the lintel.  The East and West had sent their contributions to replenish the window.

The poor slave had toiled, died perhaps, to produce yon pyramid of swarthy sugar marked “Only 6 1/2d.”—­That catty box, on which was the epigraph “Strong family Congo only 3s. 9d,” was from the country of Confutzee—­that heap of dark produce bore the legend “Try our real nut”—­’Twas Cocoa—­and that nut the Cocoa-nut, whose milk has refreshed the traveller and perplexed the natural philosopher.  The shop in question was, in a word, a Grocer’s.