The Black Dolls of England are a highly comic race. They were the first
to mingle the unctuous joke with the dry details of business, and to
give a lightness to puffs before unknown to the paste of the
Billsticker. They are the Smolletts of Posters, and the Fieldings of the
Broad Sheet. Clare Market appears to be the grand centre of these right
merrie marine store shops. Here a magazine of linen rags and witty
conceits displays a thoroughly Gran-tian work of art, in which one cook
is inquiring of another, who wears a chapeau in tremendously full
flower, "My dear, where did you get that splendid new bonnet from?" to
which the other replies, "Why, by carrying my bones and fat to the real
original Black Doll, No. 12," &c. Another racy repository exhibits a
grand transparency, representing a _tête-à-tête_ between the Black Doll
and one of her fellow-countrymen, in which the dark gentleman, in a most
unniggerly dialect, is made to ask, "Why, Dinah, do all the people come
to Massa's shop?" and Dinah to reply, "Because Sambo, Massa gives the
best price for all old-iron, linen rags, and kitchen stuff." Then there
is the highly popular bellman, who is eternally crying, "Oh yes! Oh yes!
WE (!) are now giving two-pence for three pounds of old bones," &c. And
last of all, the exceedingly tempting inquiry, "Do you want a plum
pudding?" of which dainty there is prefixed a splendidly coloured
caricature, and for which one spirited rag merchant subjoins the
following curious recipe:—