This is the true London vehicle, the characteristic
conveyance, as characteristic as the Russian droshky, the gondola at
Venice, or the caique at Stamboul. It is the camel of the London desert
routes; routes which run right through civilisation, but of which daily
paper civilisation is ignorant. People who can pay for a daily paper are
so far above it; a daily paper is the mark of the man who is in
civilisation.
Take an old-fashioned shutter and balance it on the axle of a pair of low
wheels, and you have the London camel in principle. To complete it add
shafts in front, and at the rear run a low free-board, as a sailor would
say, along the edge, that the cargo may not be shaken off. All the skill
of the fashionable brougham-builders in Long Acre could not contrive a
vehicle which would meet the requirements of the case so well as this. On
the desert routes of Palestine a donkey becomes romantic; in a
coster-monger's barrow he is only an ass; the donkey himself doesn't see
the distinction. He draws a good deal of human nature about in these
barrows, and perhaps finds it very much the same in Surrey and Syria. For
if any one thinks the familiar barrow is merely a truck for the
conveyance of cabbages and carrots, and for the exposure of the same to
the choice of housewives in Bermondsey, he is mistaken.
Pages:
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312