Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-07-10
IN COVENT GARDEN,
Novel Sights at the Break Of
Day Where London Gets
Its Food Supply.
FLOWERS IN PROPULSION.
Hardy Women Who Garry Prodig-
ious Burdens on Their Heads
BEAUTY AND HEALTH COMBINED.
A Pathetic Picers Of the Career Of Mn
James Brown Potter.
FLOWERS IN PROPULSION.
BEAUTY AND HEALTH COMBINED.
LITTLE HARSHALL wILDRI's SUCCESS
rccnx1sroNpENc1 OF THE pIsPArcH.1


ket in the early morning Is one Of the
sights of London sight, however, tina,
visitors more often promise themselves to
see than see. Working London isn't up
and about as early as is Pittsburg-whether
owing to the dull sky or the overnight beer
can't Nv; end the market at o'clock in
the orning is reached without meeting
half dozen people in 20 minutes walk,
those one meets being usually the drabs and
wrecks, soggv with gin or beer, who are
staggering from their doorway lodgings,
rubbing their eyes and stretching their
limbs to srovel through another day.
Convent Garden Market is the great
wholesale supply depot from which London
Is fed, where all the small dealers buy their
fruit, vegetables and flowers, and in the
three divisions there are acres of crates,
boxes, barrels and hampers, particularly
hampers, for the English rather run to
hampers, filed with tons of vegetables and
fruit, and thousands of pots of flowers.
This is one place where there are life and
movement at dawn, and plenty of them.
There is quick buying and selling-that is,
it's quick considering that it's English, for
an Englishman must live very long life
indeed to accomplish much in the leisurely
manner things are done here.
Where Aristocrat and Piebian Meet.
There are buyers from all parts of Lon
don-big, prosperous looking Englishmen
laying in the good things for the lordly
ttomachs of MAYFAIR, and dirty chaps from
the East End getting the supply for the less
fastidious folk down Whitechapel way.
Women are scarce in the vegetable and
fruit divisions, except women who sell, and
it's just as we'll that they are SO, for. with
the boxes and crates and hampers being
hurried through the aisles five minutes is a
long interval during which not to get a
Thack on the head from q projecting corner
or not to be tnvoluntarily enthroned on
crate of potatoes or barrel of cabbages,
while the light and airy persifiage of the
hucksters and green grocers is quite enough
IN itself to induce women to stay at home.
The flower market is the place for them,
however, and they are there in armies,
from the tourist to the porteress The
flower trade is an immense one. There are
few English tables, except of the humblest,
that are not decorated with potted plants or
cut flowers, and few houses of any preten-
sion that are without flowers in the windows,
along the balconies, or in the back yard
which is dignifed into garden" here,
and not decorated with an ash heap, empty
cans or broken china and tinware that has
outlived its usefulness.
The Egg ish ReveI in Flowers.
Flowers are cheap, keep we'll in the cool
climate, and are one of the regular items in
every good housekeeper's expense account.
The flower market is quite as big as either
of the others, and there are pyramids and
tiers and shelves OF potted plants and cut
flowers in it. Ask the price of them, and
you are told the rate per dozen, for the trade
Is SO big that the dealers never suspect .
buyer as wanting such trihe as one or two
pots 1t is beautiful display and one that
would delight a woman's heart if she could
view it calmly, but there's such confusion
of hasty buying and selling that one only
gathers a jumblcd impression of a color
hash and notion that the Garden of Eden
must have smelled like this.
Everything, from the rarest of orchids, at
guinea a pot to our common field daisy,
ut shillings for dozen pots, is on sale.
There are tea roses and moss roses lying on
beds of cotton; soft, pale pril1roses-that
are poor little things after all to have in
Ipired a poet-tied up in bunches like bum
ches of cress and piled in masses on the
stands; there's the "wee modest, crimson
tipped flower" that Bobby Burns said ten
are palms as tall as am, waiting to stand
guard round some dainty woman's tea
table; there are roses, with stems half
yard long, in " hich duchess nose may be
buried, hob.nobbing in friendly way with
gay, sancy little nasturtiums. that NAV
lind their way to an attic window and
humble heart.
Blossoms for Funerals and weddinSs
There are tiny white blossoms that may
be gently laid in waxen fingers on calm,
dead hearts, cuddling close to warm-tinted
carnations, rose buds, and the like that are
destined 10 be worn in the buttonhole of
some careless youth of hopeful age There's
mignonette, with its pretentious shyness;
heliotrope, with its over-rated sweetness;
pansies, 'for thoughts dear, kindly-taced
companions; ox-eye daisies, jolly fellows;
graceful sweet peas; tulips, Haunting vuI-
garians; lilies of the valley, with their
'tremulous bells, whom youth makes so
fair ana passion so pale;" feathery kiss-me-
quick, jaunty bachelors buttons, tiresomelv |
decorative hvdrangeas, great coarse iowery /
rhododendrons, flowing geraniums, and it |
does seem all things green and bright that |
were made to beautify the earth.
One buys and wonders what to do with |
them pudgy woman wearing an apron
tied round an ample waist, and a wadded |
black roll like good big sausage curled |
round on her head, volunteers to ''Tike |
'um ONE fur you liedy," and ''tike 'um" |
she viii for shilling or so, according to |
the distance. All the porter work in the |
hower market is done bv women. They |
are licensed to do it, and it is truly mar |
velous to see them carrying the great bas- |
kets on their heads. Just think of carrying |
big basket filled with 10 or 20 flower pots, |
each filled with earth and flowers, on ones |
head for half an hour, crossing busy streets |
and lodging carts and cabs the whilel They |
DO 1t, and carry them as steadily as though |
they were nailed to them.
Women Who Farm Out Their Work.
Some of the old women. wise in their day, |
farm cut the work. They possess the |
licenses, contract TO do the work, and in |
iced go so ar as to carry the baskets out of |
the market house when a shambling fellow |
or stockv, cow-taced young woman appears
on the scene, takes the basket from the old |
woman and trudges along with it while the |
boss OF the job trots along behind, gives her |
orders and pays two or three pence for the |
labor. sometimes the portresses strike for |
higher pay when they set their burdens /
down at buyers door, and if they don't get !
ft-and policeman isn't in sight-they ex- /
press their disappointment in language that /
stamps longehoreman's remarks under |
high pressure as choice and elegant diction
when compared with il.
Picturesque figures they are trudging |
along the streets in the eariy morning with /
q veritable garden of CAV flowers nodding
their pretty heaps ever the sides Of the |
basket, but at times they carry with them
suggestion OF such grim poverty that the /
flowers seem cruelty gay. I've met them |