Months ago one of The Journal readers suggested a story to be found down
on Market street near the Hobart building. Many times since when passing
there I have thought that those street hawkers must have a certain
picturesque and even humorous value, and hoping to find it I have
stopped to listen. But the moment I stop they win me with their
everlasting logic, and then blessed if I can write them up. They have
the same effect upon others. I have seen chambers of commerce and stock
exchangers and professors from Berkeley passing with a supercilious
glance which did very well so long as they kept moving. But once let
them step into the magic ring and they too became mesmerized and stood
there gaping in spellbound interest. “Logic is logic, that’s all I say.”
Those hawkers are artists, skilled in the arts and wiles of
persuasiveness. There is one with a long, horse-hair wig which he
occasionally brushes back from his eyes with a dignified flourish. This
man has found the supreme elixir and the secret of perpetuity. He is the
only man in the world, this modern Ponce de Leon, who knows the secret.
Surely we need not blush to listen to its exposition, $2 is a small sum
to pay for such a bonanza. Forty thousand people have used it in the
last thirty-nine days. Think of it. “Take it right out into the crowd
and sniff it for yourself,” he urges and somehow that breaks the spell,
and strong men look foolishly at each other and move a-way.
Horoscopes, suspenders, iron watch charms, brown cakes that may pass
for maple sugar, ironing wax, laundry soap or penuchia, a book on
Prohibition, mending wax and books of magic are all there. They are not
things which we particularly want, but that’s the point. Anyone can sell
things that people want. But these men are professional persuaders of
men against their will whose mission it is to make people want what they
don’t want. That’s Art.
The horoscope seller must have taken his degree from some college of
venders, his call has such finesse. I cannot reproduce the lilt of
it--“Here’s where you get your horoscope, a dime, ten cents.” It is
suggestive of the midways of country fairs, shooting galleries on the
Board Walk, and circuses in the springtime. “Here’s where you get your
horoscope, a dime, ten cents.”
The little, old, blind man sitting there with one hand outstretched
and the other holding a book, his white hair and beard neatly combed,
reminds me of something Biblical and prophetic like pictures in old
churches. Alas! no one seems to buy his story of prohibition. I think he
would do lots better in Kansas or Iowa. A particularly fascinating
one is the man of mending wax who stands before his table like some
professor of chemistry with a tiny flame and saucers of mysterious
powders and, I almost said, a blow pipe.
But, pshaw, I can’t write them up. I take them too seriously. “Logic is
logic, that’s all I say.”