3-065-617 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches from St. Petersburg, 1874. 'Our Special Artist...supplies a page of characteristic Russian street-figures...The first...[is the] Dogs' Meat Man...there is due provision for cats, as we see by the gratitude of that affectionate creature rubbing her head against the purveyor's legs...The next figure is a woman selling eggs. The head or bust-portrait, with these at the top of the page, is that of a common workman. Beneath him is a sweep, or foreman of a gang of sweeps...The fifth subject...is one of the street venders of a cheap breakfast, consisting of eggs, boiled cabbage, bread, or sausages, to be eaten on the spot...hot from the portable oven or can. A maidservant, who wears her summer dress, is next seen taking in her master's letters from the postman at the house door. Beside this group is a hawker of toys, with a few of those Chinese counting-frames, set with parallel wires to support numbers of movable coloured beads, which are sometimes used for teaching arithmetic to children. At the bottom of the page is the hackney sledge, or sleigh, which in winter supersedes the ordinary kind of hackney carriage...The furred cloaks and caps, worn by driver and passenger, are quite necessary at this season of the year'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.