A
Singular Invention For This Purpose Of Pressing Is A Ship, Which Is
Placed On Land Not Far From The Tower, On Tower Hill, Furnished With
Masts And All The Appurtenances Of A Ship.
The persons attending
this ship promise simple country people, who happen to be standing
and staring at it, to
Show it to them for a trifle, and as soon as
they are in, they are secured as in a trap, and according to
circumstances made sailors of or let go again.
The footway, paved with large stones on both sides of the street,
appears to a foreigner exceedingly convenient and pleasant, as one
may there walk in perfect safety, in no more danger from the
prodigious crowd of carts and coaches, than if one was in one's own
room, for no wheel dares come a finger's breadth upon the curb
stone. However, politeness requires you to let a lady, or any one
to whom you wish to show respect, pass, not, as we do, always to the
right, but on the side next the houses or the wall, whether that
happens to be on the right or on the left, being deemed the safest
and most convenient. You seldom see a person of any understanding
or common sense walk in the middle of the streets in London,
excepting when they cross over, which at Charing Cross and other
places, where several streets meet, is sometimes really dangerous.
It has a strange appearance - especially in the Strand, where there
is a constant succession of shop after shop, and where, not
unfrequently, people of different trades inhabit the same house - to
see their doors or the tops of their windows, or boards expressly
for the purpose, all written over from top to bottom with large
painted letters. Every person, of every trade or occupation, who
owns ever so small a portion of a house, makes a parade with a sign
at his door; and there is hardly a cobbler whose name and profession
may not be read in large golden characters by every one that passes.
It is here not at all uncommon to see on doors in one continued
succession, "Children educated here," "Shoes mended here," "Foreign
spirituous liquors sold here," and "Funerals furnished here;" of all
these inscriptions. I am sorry to observe that "Dealer in foreign
spirituous liquors" is by far the most frequent. And indeed it is
allowed by the English themselves, that the propensity of the common
people to the drinking of brandy or gin is carried to a great
excess; and I own it struck me as a peculiar phraseology, when, to
tell you that a person is intoxicated or drunk, you hear them say,
as they generally do, that he is in liquor. In the late riots,
which even yet are hardly quite subsided, and which are still the
general topic of conversation, more people have been found dead near
empty brandy-casks in the streets, than were killed by the musket-
balls of regiments that were called in.
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