Читать книгу Mark the Match Boy - Horatio Alger Jr., Alger Horatio Jr., Thomas Chandler Haliburton - Страница 8

Just across from Fulton Ferry stands Fulton Market. It is nearly fifty years old, having been built in 1821, on ground formerly occupied by unsightly wooden buildings, which were, perhaps fortunately, swept away by fire. It covers the block bounded by Fulton, South, Beekman, and Front Streets, and was erected at a cost of about quarter of a million of dollars.

This is the chief of the great city markets, and an immense business is done here. There is hardly an hour in the twenty-four in which there is an entire lull in the business of the place. Some of the outside shops and booths are kept open all night, while the supplies of fish, meats, and vegetables for the market proper are brought at a very early hour, almost before it can be called morning.

Besides the market proper the surrounding sidewalks are roofed over, and lined with shops and booths of the most diverse character, at which almost every conceivable article can be purchased. Most numerous, perhaps, are the chief restaurants, the counters loaded with cakes and pies, with a steaming vessel of coffee smoking at one end. The floors are sanded, and the accommodations are far from elegant or luxurious; but it is said that the viands are by no means to be despised. Then there are fruit-stalls with tempting heaps of oranges, apples, and in their season the fruits of summer, presided over for the most part by old women, who scan shrewdly the faces of passers-by, and are ready on the smallest provocation to vaunt the merits of their wares. There are candy and cocoanut cakes for those who have a sweet tooth, and many a shop-boy invests in these on his way to or from Brooklyn to the New York store where he is employed; or the father of a family, on his way to his Brooklyn home, thinks of the little ones awaiting him, and indulges in a purchase of what he knows will be sure to be acceptable to them.

But it is not only the wants of the body that are provided for at Fulton Market. On the Fulton Street side may be found extensive booths, at which are displayed for sale a tempting array of papers, magazines, and books, as well as stationery, photograph albums, etc., generally at prices twenty or thirty per cent. lower than is demanded for them in the more pretentious Broadway or Fulton Avenue stores.

Even at night, therefore, the outer portion of the market presents a bright and cheerful shelter from the inclement weather, being securely roofed over, and well lighted, while some of the booths are kept open, however late the hour.