Page:Hopkinson Smith--In Dickens's London.djvu/125

 CHAPTER VIII

must be up bright and early to enjoy Covent Garden Market.

At five o'clock, the open space surrounding the stalls fronting St. Paul's is almost impassable, so thickly massed are the carts and wagons. At eight o'clock one can get through with a little patience and the assistance of the police; at ten o'clock you can drive along at a trot; at noon the wide highway is swept clean, with here and there a van backed up to the sidewalk reloading the unsold truck.

I had, the year before, in seeking shelter from a driving rain, opened my stool and set up my easel under the portico of St. Paul's Church and from this coign of vantage had caught the vista ending in the Sporting Club known in Mr. Thackeray's time as Evan's Chop House, in which he read the last chapter of "The Newcomes" to Mr. Lowell and cried over the colonel's death.

To-day, a June sun making it possible for me to get a wider range, I had with the permission of a gold-laced and 73