A Hundred Years Ago
THE SPECTATOR, JUNE 27rs, l829.
Tax INDULGENCE or LUXURY.
We hear at this moment a man crying fine ripe strawberries at fourpence a pottle beneath our window : he also calls hautboys (brought originally from America) ; and we know, if we stop him and examine his basket, we shall find several kinds—such as the pine strawberry, the Alpine, &c., not natives of this country. But if the rich had never encouraged the cultivation of this and other fruits by paying enormous prices for them when they were rare, and far beyond the reach of the great mass of the people, the citizens of London might now, it is probable, have occasionally a few wood strawberries when they took a jaunt to visit their country friends ; but a plenty of the cultivated fruit would have been unheard of.
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