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The Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack, by One of the Fraternity [w. Green] Ed. by C. Hindley
The Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack by One of the Fraternity Ed by C Hindley - w. Green Author:William Green General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1876 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES A CHEAP JACK. 'Tis strange, but true ; for truth is always strange -- Stranger than fiction. IN giving a series of short sketches of the life, manners, and customs of Cheap Johns, vulgo Jacks, including my own life and adventures as a member of that fraternity, it is absolutely necessary in the first place to disabuse the public mind of certain things they have read in books or seen enacted upon the British stage in reference to them in general, and the parties whom I shall hereafter name in particular. For in all my experience -- and I have seen and heard all of any note that have appeared in any part of England during the last forty years- -- I never saw anything or anybody like the Dr. Marigold of the late Charles Dickens, or that nondescript in little Buckstone's popular and withal powerful drama the "Flowers of the Forest," where Cheap John is made out to be part gipsy, part thief, part lawyer, and part idiot, and theatrically drawn in such a manner that, I am sure, " none but himself can be his parallel." Nor is his crying pal the " Kinchin" any more faithfully drawn. Now, when I travelled, we had in the first place to be licensed as hawkers, and to get that licence we had to pay 8/. per year, or any portion of a year, for one horse, or 2l. for two horses, besides getting two vouchers from two respectable persons being householders, and the signature of the clergyman of the parish, as a guarantee that we were respectable and deserving persons to be trusted with a licence. A man that travels as a Cheap John is thought nothing of as a master unless he has at least 1...« less