Boys and girls are my best customers, sir, and mostly the smallest of them; but then,
again, some of them's fifty, aye, turned fifty; Lor' love you. An old fellow, that hasn't a stump of a tooth in front, why, he'll stop and buy a ha'porth of hard-bake, and he'll say, 'I've a deal of the boy left about me still.' He doesn't show it, anyhow, in his look. I'm sometimes a thinking I'll introduce a softer sort of toffy—boiled treacle, such as they call Tom Trot in some parts, but it's out of fashion now, just for old people that's 'boys still.' It was rolled in a ha'penny stick, sir, and sold stunnin'. The old ones wants something to suck, and not to chew. Why, when I was a lad at school, there was Jews used to go about with boxes on their backs, offering rings and pencilcases, and lots of things that's no real use to nobody, and they told everybody they asked to buy 'that they sold everything, and us boys used to say—'Then give's a ha'porth of boiled treacle.' It was a regular joke. I wish I'd stuck more to my book then, but what can't be cured must be endured, you know. Now, those poor things that walks down there" (intimating, by a motion of the head, a thoroughfare frequented by girls of the town), "they're often customers, but not near so good as they was ten year ago; no, indeed, nor six or eight year. They like something that bites in the mouth, such as peppermint-rock, or ginger-drops. They used to buy a penn'orth or two and offer it to people, but they don't now, I think. I've trusted them ha'pennies and pennies, sometimes. They always paid me. Some that held their heads high like, might say: 'I really have no change; I'll pay you to-morrow.' She hadn't no change, poor lass, sure enough, and she hadn't nothing to change either, I'll go bail. I've known women, that seemed working men's or little shopkeeper's wives, buy of me and ask which of my stuffs took greatest hold of the breath. I always knew what they was up to. They'd been having a drop, and didn't want it to be detected. Why, it was only last Saturday week two niceish-looking and niceishdressed women, comes up to me, and one was going to buy peppermint-rock, and the other says to her: 'Don't, you fool, he'll only think you've been drinking gin-and-peppermint. Coffee takes it off best.' So I lost my customers. They hadn't had a single drain that night, I'll go bail, but still they didn't look like regular lushingtons at all. I make farthing's-worths of sweet-stuff, for children, but I don't like it; it's an injury to trade. I was afraid that when half-farthings was coined, they'd come among children, and they'd want half a farthing of brandy-balls. Now, talking of brandy-balls, there's a gentleman that sometimes has a minute's chat with me, as he buys a penn'orth to take home to his children—(every reasonable man ought to marry and have children for the sake of the sweet-trade, but it ain't the women's fault that many's single still)—when one gentleman I knows buys brandy-balls, he says, quite grave, 'What kind o' brandy do you put in them?' 'Not a drop of British,' says I, 'I
The Coster Boy and Girl Tossing the Pie-Man. [From a Daguerreotype by Beard.]
can assure you; not a single drop.' He's not finely dressed; indeed, he's a leetle seedy, but I know he's a gentleman, or what's the same thing, if he ain't rich; for a common fellow 'll never have his boots polished that way, every day of his life; his blacking bills must come heavy at Christmas. I can tell a gentleman, too, by his way of talk, 'cause he's never bumptious. It's the working people's children that's my great support, and they was a better support, by 2s. in every 10s., and more, when times was better; and next to them among my patrons is poor people. Perhaps, this last year, I've cleared 11s. a week, not more, all through. I make my own stuffs, except the drops, and they require machinery. I would get out of the streets if I could.
