knew him) doesn't seem to get any older, and
cries " Clo'! " to this day with undiminished
voice and bag. I am not afraid of him now,
and have even held conversations with him
touching the statistics and profits of his trade.
But I dream about him sometimes, and never
look at that very large bag of his without a
certain sort of awed and hushed curiosity.
Very curious are early impressions in their
ineffaceability. We can remember the father
or the sister who died when we were babes
almost, with minute distinctness; and yet
forget what happened the day before yesterday.
How well we can remember the history
of Jack Horner, and the adventures of the
other Jack, who rose in life through the
instrumentality of a bean-stalk; and yet,
how often we forget the matter of the first
leader in the Morning Bellower, before we
have got half through the second one!

The subject of left-off garments has always
been an interesting one to me, for it is fertile
in the vagabond-picturesque, a quality I much
affect. Yet are there many mysteries
connected with the old clothes question; which,
though I have studied it somewhat profoundly,
I am as yet unable to fathom. To what I do
know, however, the reader is perfectly
welcome.

The statistics of ancient habiliments have
already been fully and admirably touched
upon, in " another place," as honourable
Members say. The aspect of Rag Fair, Cloth
Fair, Petticoat Lane, and Holywell Street,
have, moreover, been described over and over
again; so that my lay will be, perhaps, only
an old song to a questionably new tune, after
all. But there is nothing new under the sun
to speak of, and to be entirely original
would be, too, as out of the fashion, as it is out
of my power to be so.

Imprimis, of old clothesmen. Why should
the Hebrew race appear to possess a monopoly
in the purchase and sale of dilapidated
costume? Why should their voices, and
theirs alone, be employed in the constant
iteration of the talismanic monosyllables " Old
Clo' ? " Is it because Judas carried the bag
that all the children of Israel are to trudge
through London streets from morn till eve
with sack on shoulder ? In Glasgow, they
say, the Irish have commenced the clothes
trade, and have absolutely pushed the Jew
clothesmen from their stools. I can scarcely
believe so astounding an assertion. I could
as soon imagine an Israelitish life-guardsman
as a Hibernian old clothesman. I can't—can
you—can anybody—imagine the strident,
guttural " Ogh Clo' " of the Hebrew, the mot
d'ordre, the shibboleth, the password of his
race, transposed into the mellifluous buttermilky
notes of the sister isle?

My old clothesmen are all of the "people."
Numerous are they, persevering, all-observant,
astute, sagacious, voluble yet discreet, prudent
yet speculative. They avoid crowded main
streets, and prefer shadier and quieter
thoroughfares. These do they perambulate
indefatigably at all seasons, in all weathers. Lives
there the man who ever saw an old clothesman
with an umbrella? I mean using it for
the purpose an umbrella is generally put to.
He may have, and very probably has, half-a-
dozen in his bag, or somewhere about him,
but never was he known to elevate one above
his head.

I am sorry to gird at an established idea, but
duty compels me to do so. Artists generally
represent the old clothesman with three, and
sometimes four, hats superposed one above
the other. Now, though I have seen him
with many hats in his hands or elsewhere, I
never yet saw him with more than one hat on his
head; and I have been assured by a respectable
member of the fraternity, with whom I
lately transacted business, that the three-hat
tradition has no foundation whatever; in
fact, that it is a mere device of the enemy, as
shallow a libel as the ballad of " Hugh of
Lincoln," or the assertion that Jews cannot
expectorate, but must, nolens volens, slobber.
The three-hatted clothesman, if he ever
existed, is obsolete; but I incline to consider
him a myth, an æsthetic pre-Raphaelite
abstraction, like the Sphinx, or the woman
caressing her Chimæra.

The old old clothesman is, I am sorry to
say, becoming every day a swan of blacker hue.
Young Israel has taken the field, and Old
Jewry—old, bearded, gabardined, bent-backed
Jewry is nearly extinct. It may be, perhaps,
that after a certain age he abandons the bag,
and laying in a large stock of crockery-ware,
and vouchers for enormous sums, retires to the
East, where he awaits the goods which the
gods of diplomacy provide him.

Very rarely now is the gabardine—that
long, loose, shapeless garment, the same on
which Antonio spat—to be seen in London
streets. I recollect the time when nearly all
the old clothesmen wore it, and I am certain
my clothesman—the bogey of my childhood—
was wont to be habited therein. Young Israel
wears cut-away coats, and chains, and rings;
has eschewed the beard for the curl known as
aggravator, the chin tuft, and the luxuriant
fringe of whisker; carries the bag jauntily,
not wearily and cumbrously, as Old Jewry
did. But the inside is the same, the sagacity,
the perseverance, the bargaining—oh! the
keen bargaining is as keen as ever.

Then there is the bagless clothesman—the
apparently bagless one at least—the marchand
sans sac. You may be in the street, and meet
a gentleman attired in the first style of fashion,
walking easily along, twirling his cane, and
thinking, it would seem, of nothing at all.
Passing him, you catch his eye; you find out
that he has not got that piercing black eye
and that acutely aquiline nose for nothing.
He sidles up to you, and in an insinuating sotto
voce, something between a stage " aside " and
an invitation to "buy a little dawg" from a
Regent-street fancier, asks you the momentous