National Republican., 1883-04-04
MORNING IN THE MARKETS.
An Early Hour Among the People Who
Supply Your Tables.
Some Of the Curious Characters You
Find-What They Offer
Gossip With the Old Woman Who Sells "Yorbs'
and the Market Girls Who Offer Laurel Leaves.
The Forests OF Dressed Meats, F1ocks OF
Game, and No End ~ Vegetables.

The gray dawn was slowly breaking in the
mottled and misty east when REPUBLICAN
reporter sauntered past the Center market.
A single bar of crimson cloud flecked with
streaks of yellow, showed the sun to be near
rising, but its struggles with the gray vapors
indicated a stormy day. Little attention to
the weather, however, did the market people
seem to pay. They were too busy in prepar-
ing for the crowds that an hour later
would see thronging the approaches to the
stalls and stands for it was too early TO see
The market in full blast The great food pur-
veying machine was getting mp steam for its
daily work. On the south front of the market,
ON both sides the street, the country people
were stationed with their wagons and wares,
the latter even thus early being arranged
in tempting display. Passing along by the
Smithsonian fence you walked down an
avenue, one side of which was lined with
vegetables of different kinds, set out
in all possible forms Here were lit
tie hillocks of brown potatoes, their dun jack
cts enveloping hearts of snowy pulp, ready,
under the seductive persuasion of steam and
hot water, to swell up in flaky masses of sa-
worry, appetizing starch Flankcd by green,
curly kale and crisp white parsnips were
pickling cabbages, their peculiar red leaves
suggesting peppered vinegar, and that pene-
cabbage from the cuisine Of the refined and
the delicate. Pyramids of spring onions,
their white knob-like heads surmounting
tassels of dropping, green leaves looked at
you cunningly as you passed. For vegetables,
no less than animals, have individuality II
not sentence, and are marked by idiosyn-
crasies as prominent as if they were intelli-
gent You stop by pile of spinach, and note
the smile of afiectation it wears. 1t has a
clammy, simpering look a faint suggestion of
fetidness in its leaves, yet it blinks at you
impudently, and would be kale If it could
In the heraldry of vegetables spinach has no
family record, but is sort of bastard cross
between a leck and weed, with no merit to
recommend 1t and no attraction to offer either
the eye or the palate.
The market people on the outside look
bright and cheerful. They bear no trace of
that heavy-eyed and yawning look which one
would suppose attends people who get up
during the night to do days work. You
are struck by the general air of intelligence
that they have, You see they have more
than an average taste by the artistic
manner in which instinctively their
wares are arranged Color blends into
color, and form melts into form, by
gradations as harmonious as. il carefully
studied and wrought by attention to the rules
of art. Among the colored traders there is
picturcsqueness pleasant to behold. They
are the gypsics of the market wilderness
Bedouins as to dress, Milesians as to wit.
They are not as gorgeous now as in antebel-
lum days. Tho red and yellow bandanna
handkerchief headgear is seldom seen now.
The cultured among the whites have the sun
flower and the tiger lily, and the colored
market woman has resigned to the aristocratic
Rsthete the strong, warm, primary tints.
"Old gold" the Wildes and the Rosettis call it;
"but laws honey" said an old market woman
to the reporter, "it's muffin but yaller." A
peculiar feature of the market is the herb"
woman For generations she has haunted
the "mash market" Around her head is n
different handkerchief, quieter, more sub
dued than formerly, but it is the same head. 1t
is the same old basket, too, the same herbs,
and in season the same flowers, and it is the
same old short pipe she is smoking that ex-
cited your wonder thirty years ago. And 1t
is the same old woman, too. There are a
great many of her. Here is one who gen.
Grafton ago squatted in corner and
offered you wild cherry bark and
life everlasting. She isn't bit older now.
There is the restless-eyed girl, with the scar
let lips and the milk-white teeth, who offers
you the same laurel leaves she did quarter
of n century ago. She is the same age now as
then. How does she manage it? There are
two changes only in the market woman. She
charges you cents now where formerly she
demanded u cent, and she does not take us
kindly to the salutatiOn of "Aunty" as she
did before the war, But she has the same old,
hearty, persuasive voice, the same peculiar
magnetism that makes you buy whether you
want to or not, and, If needs be, tho same
keen power of rcpartec.
whats this, aunty?" said the reporter,
pausing before basket and picking up u
bundle of lcmon-shaped leaves.
"ThomY Thoms laurel leayes, honey, five
cents n bunch.'
"What arc they good for?" was the next
query.
ooh, you makes a tea Of them. Some folks
says they are good for fevers and to sharpen
yer up, like"
"Aint got anything to mako you stupid,
eh aunty?"
"No, honey. Doesn't yer want sum er this? %
ono, aunty. Pm coming back, and if you
we got something to make people feel stupid,
I'll take some"
Claws, honey, you'll never come back
You needn't to F."
Once inside the market with the vaulted
ceiling hanging over you like the fretted
arches of cathedral, you move along past
the groaning stalls that are bright with color
and marvellous from variety. You are be-
wildered by the countless objects before you,
and, unconsciously, not having basket with
You or any money in your pOcketbook, you
take on an imaginative mood. Up Beef
Avenue you saunter through a variegated
forest of forequarters and hindquarters,
glowing III Icu Hesn, ana Wnlte ana
yellow fat. Beneath these hanging masses of
animal arbory spring up like blood-red
flowers, the sliced beef steak Hanging like
tropical fruit from the tip of the stalls are
great bunches of beef tongues, for all the
world like huge knots of over-Tipe bananas
whose delicate yellow has turned to brown.
Here and there q carcass bigger than lamb
but smaller than bullock, eXcites your Gu
riosty. 1t looks like n skinned kangaroo
with the hind legs raced.
"What is that?" you ask an attendant at
the stall.
"That2 Calf" he replies, with tnge of
contempt at your ignorance. You turn away
with a somewhat disagreeable uncertainty
lingering in your mind as to whether his
answer was intended to convey information
or to express his opinion of you, You forget
all this in minute, however, as you suddenly
come under a canopy of ducks. There,
hanging to the top beams of a stall, is
a whole flock of ducks, as if sud
denly ARRESTED in the act of flight.
Beyond them is a forest of dressed chickens.
Still further ON is battalion of dressed hogs.
There is n comical air of simplicity and re-
liableness about hog, dead or alive, that is
very entertaining. They say majesty di-
hog of his hide and extremities and he still
affords you middling satisfaction. No animal
exhibits better than the hog. Here, be-
sides his llayed and dressed carcass, all sound
sweet meat to the bone, were tubs of sausage
buckets of lard, pyramids of pigs feet, great
rows of hogs heads, and various other de-