Here and there, along the sidewalk below, a father worked his way through
the throng, a licorice-bedaubed cherub on one arm, his coat (borne with
long enough) on the other; followed by a mother with the other children
hanging to her skirts and tagging exasperatingly behind, holding red and
blue toy balloons and delectable batons of spiral-striped peppermint in
tightly closed, sadly sticky fingers.
A thousand cries rent the air; the strolling mountebanks and gypsying
booth-merchants; the peanut vendors; the boys with palm-leaf fans for
sale; the candy sellers; the popcorn peddlers; the Italian with the toy
balloons that float like a cluster of colored bubbles above the heads of
the crowd, and the balloons that wail like a baby; the red-lemonade man,
shouting in the shrill voice that reaches everywhere and endures forever:
"Lemo! Lemo! Ice-cole lemo! Five cents, a nickel, a half-a-dime, the
twentiethpotofadollah! Lemo! Ice-cole lemo!"--all the vociferating
harbingers of the circus crying their wares. Timid youth, in shoes covered
with dust through which the morning polish but dimly shone, and
unalterably hooked by the arm to blushing maidens, bought recklessly of
peanuts, of candy, of popcorn, of all known sweetmeats, perchance; and
forced their way to the lemonade stands; and there, all shyly, silently
sipped the crimson-stained ambrosia.
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