The Sweet-Seller

The sweet-seller is the one we should ask - and he says, and mark this, he had to give the matter no thought, he says: "I'll tell you about them; those men with their pockets stuffed with caramel bombs, marshmallow, raspberry drops, and all of that what-not. They crane their necks forward, peering through hands made into tunnels in their eagerness to see ahead of the buses in which they travel into the centre of town; they press themselves against the glass of the buses, they with their disgusting running saliva; press to see me, me, the sweet-seller with my tray of sweetmeats slung around my neck, walking along pavements wearing my white cardboard hat. I have everything they want. I tell you, sometimes they leap from the buses even before they have stopped! Missing their footing, they tumble and roll like coloured balls and bump into lamp-posts, then leaping up they fight their way to the head of the queue, that eager are they to get first pickings. Later, the money in their pockets spent, they retire to the edge of the pavement and there, when the back-slapping and the hugging is done, they stand in a group, eyes tight-closed, sucking and sucking. And should a woman, a wife or a mother say, stand by the corner a long way off, and call to one of these very preoccupied sweet-eaters, call something such as: 'Dearest! Hoi! Come and see. Come and do.' all the while bending forward and slapping her thighs as if to some sort of pet (and oh how these wives and mothers do come to resent the need for all that thigh-slapping) then will sweet-toothed 'Dearest', that impish creature, hop from one foot to the other, and hold back for as long as he can. You see, and this is the clarification I want you to have before I continue on my round, you see the sweet-eater's explication lies here - whereas normal functioning men squat on the pavement clutching their sweetmeat in one hand for a time, as is normal, and then (finding something to achieve) scratch their heads, balance the task and the sweetmeat, the one against the other, while they run off and cast quite away the sweetmeat, the sweet-eater on the other hand feels no such compunction. On the contrary, in the background, his eyes preoccupied, the sweet-eater sits at the foot of the wall licking his thumbs.

"But I will say this: despite the apparent evidence to the contrary, we give very little to the sweet-eater and (let me shock you) to children also. To them we will give some of our time only - how effortless we find it, and how sweet - whereas for the peer who inspires us and raises our game, we will up and make ourselves interesting; we may even develop an hitherto unrealised wit. We give the sweet-eater little. And it is right that this is so."