One of the most appealing and interesting elements in city life, particularly that metropolitan city life which characterizes New York, is the pushcart man. This curious creature of modest intellect and varying nationality infests all the highways of the great city without actually dominating any of them except a few streets on the East Side. He is as hard-working, in the main, as he is ubiquitous. His cart is so shabby, his stock in trade so small. If he actually earns a reasonable wage it is by dint of great energy and mere luck, for the officers of the law in apparently every community find in the presence of this person an alluring source of profit and he is picked and grafted upon as is perhaps no other member of the commonplace brotherhood of trade. I like to see them trundling their two-wheeled vehicles about the city, and I like to watch the patience and the care with which they exercise their barely tolerated profession of selling. You see them everywhere; vendors of fruit, vegetables, chestnuts on the East Side, selling even dry goods, hardware, furs and groceries; and elsewhere again the Greeks selling neckwear, flowers and curios, the latter things at which an ordinary man would look askance, but which the lower levels of society somehow find useful.
I have seen them tramping in long files across Williamsburg Bridge at one, two and three o’clock in the morning to the Wallabout Market in Brooklyn. And113 I have seen them clambering over hucksters’ wagons there and elsewhere searching for the choicest bits, which they hope to sell quickly. The market men have small consideration for them and will as lief strike or kick at them as to reach a bargain with them.
For one thing, I remember watching an old pushcart vendor one sweltering afternoon in summer from one o’clock in the afternoon to seven the same evening, and I was never more impressed with the qualities which make for success in this world, qualities which are rare in American life, or in any life, for that matter, for patience and good nature and sturdy charitable endurance are not common qualities anywhere.
He had his stand at Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street, New York, then the center of the shopping life of the city—or I had better say that he attempted to keep it there, for he was not altogether successful. He was a dark, gray-headed, grizzle-cheeked “guinea” or “dago,” as he was scornfully dubbed by the Irish policeman who made his life a burden. His eye was keen, his motion quick, his general bodily make-up active, despite the fact that he was much over fifty years of age.
“That’s a good one,” the Irish policeman observed to me in passing, noting that I was looking at him. “He’s a fox. A fine time I have keeping my eye on him.”
The old Italian seemed to realize that we were talking about him for he shifted the position of his cart nervously, moving it forward a few feet. Finding himself undisturbed, he remained there. Presently, however, a heavy ice-wagon lumbered up from the west and swung in with a reckless disregard of the persons,114 property and privileges of the vendors who were thus unobtrusively grouped together. At the same time the young Irish-American driver raised his voice in a mighty bellow:
“Get out of there! Move on out! What the hell d’ye want to block up the street for, anyway? Go on!”
With facile manipulation of his reins he threw his wagon tongue deliberately among them and did his best to cause some damage in order to satisfy his own passing irritation.
All three vendors jumped to the task of extricating their carts, but I could not help distinguishing the oldest of the three for the dexterity with which he extricated his and the peaceful manner in which he pushed it away. The lines of his face remained practically undisturbed. All his actions denoted a remarkable usedness to difficulty. Not once did he look back, either to frown or complain. Instead, his only concern was to discover the whereabouts of the policeman. For him he searched the great crowd in every direction, even craning his neck a little. When he had satisfied himself that the coast was clear, he pushed in close to the sidewalk again and began his wait for customers.
While he was thus waiting the condition of his cart and the danger of an unobserved descent on the part of a policeman engaged his entire attention. Some few peaches had fallen awry, and these he busily straightened. One pile of those which he was selling “two for five” had now become low and this he replenished from baskets of hitherto undisturbed peaches, carefully dusting the fuzz off each one with a small brush in order to115 heighten their beauty and add to the attractiveness of the pile. Incidentally his eye was upon the crowd, for every once in a while his arm would stretch out in a most dramatic manner, inviting a possible purchaser with his subtle glance.
 
The Push-cart Man
“Peaches! Fine! Peaches! Fine! Fine!”
Whenever a customer came close enough, these words were called to him in a soft, persuasive tone. He would bend gracefully forward, pick up a peach as if the mere lifting of it were a sufficient inducement, take up a paper bag as if the possible transaction were an assured thing, and look engagingly into the passerby&r............