SOLON ROBINSON, 1850 445 



of fruits in their season. What a listless life, to sit all 

 day long in the same place, day after day and year after 

 year, trafficking by the cent's worth with every person 

 passing by, who desires to gratify his longing for the 

 luscious fruit spread out to tempt his appetite. Here 

 sits a woman week after week through the fall months, 

 cracking hickory nuts unceasingly. All these market 

 women appear as though they were a portion of the hu- 

 man family set apart for that particular calling; and 

 long usage in it has unfitted them for any other. Here 

 is one, who has been known to the old residents, for at 

 least forty years. She was one of the fixtures that was 

 removed from the Old Fly Market, when the Fulton Mar- 

 ket superseded it. Judging from her healthy and robust 

 appearance, she may still sit in the same stall through 

 summer heats and wintry blasts, for forty more long 

 years — a fit emblem of patience on a monument not 

 "smiling at grief," but still peddling potatoes. 



But who comes here, rustling in silks and laces, with 

 jewels glittering in the sun? She stops to talk with the 

 old market woman; she is about to purchase something, 

 more out of a charitable feeling, perhaps, than a want 

 of the article. No, instead of giving, she is recieving 

 money — a large sum too — what can it mean? "Thank 

 you, mother." Is it possible? That word explains the 

 whole. This is the lady's daughter in her silk-velvet 

 mantilla, that the old market-woman mother in the same 

 old-faded camlet cloak, sitting in the same old chair 

 which she sat in before Miss was born. 



Across the street, alongside the East River, is the 

 wholesale fish and live-poultry market. We have seen 

 sweeter and more pleasant places for a morning walk. 

 In fact, the whole market is most notoriously free from 

 all appearance of neatness, convenience, comfort, or 

 adaptability to the purposes of a great mart of human 

 food. Yet, what a motley crowd throng hither every 

 morning for their daily provisions. Lessons of economy 

 may be studied here advantageously. Here comes now a 



