Sketches by Boz - Penn State University

Charles DickensCHAPTER XXI—BROKERS’ AND MARINE-STORE SHOPS lished with the pleasing device of a mail-coach at fullspeed, or a strange animal, supposed to have been originallyintended for a dog, with a mass of worsted-workWHEN WE AFFIRM that brokers’ shops are strange places,and that if an authentic history of their contents could in his mouth, which conjecture has likened to a basketbe procured, it would furnish many a page of amusement,and many a melancholy tale, it is necessary to This, by-the-bye, is a tempting article to young wivesof flowers.explain the class of shops to which we allude. Perhaps in the humbler ranks of life, who have a first-floor frontwhen we make use of the term ‘Brokers’ Shop,’ the minds to furnish—they are lost in admiration, and hardly knowof our readers will at once picture large, handsome warehouses,exhibiting a long perspective of French-polished they have a dog already on the best tea-tray, and twowhich to admire most. The dog is very beautiful, butdining-tables, rosewood chiffoniers, and mahogany washhand-stands,with an occasional vista of a four-post genteel about that mail-coach; and the passengers out-more on the mantel-piece. Then, there is something sobedstead and hangings, and an appropriate foreground side (who are all hat) give it such an air of reality!of dining-room chairs. Perhaps they will imagine that The goods here are adapted to the taste, or ratherwe mean an humble class of second-hand furniture repositories.Their imagination will then naturally lead the most beautiful looking Pembroke tables that wereto the means, of cheap purchasers. There are some ofthem to that street at the back of Long-acre, which is ever beheld: the wood as green as the trees in thecomposed almost entirely of brokers’ shops; where you Park, and the leaves almost as certain to fall off inwalk through groves of deceitful, showy-looking furniture,and where the prospect is occasionally enlivened assortment of tent and turn-up bedsteads, made ofthe course of a year. There is also a most extensiveby a bright red, blue, and yellow hearth-rug, embel-stained wood, and innumerable specimens of that base177