Farmers from the towns around Boston were already in the market-place around Faneuil Hall the next morning when Robert drove down from the Green Dragon.[11] Those who had quarters of beef and lamb for sale were cutting the meat upon heavy oaken tables. Fishermen were bringing baskets filled with mackerel and cod from their boats moored in the dock. An old man was pushing a wheelbarrow before him filled with lobsters. Housewives followed by negro servants were purchasing meats and vegetables, holding eggs to the light to see if they were fresh, tasting pats of butter, handling chickens, and haggling with the farmers about the prices of what they had to sell.
[Footnote 11: The market was held in the open space around Faneuil Hall, in which were rails where the farmers from the surrounding towns hitched their horses. It was bounded on one side by the dock where the fishermen moored their boats.]
The town-crier was jingling his bell and shouting that Thomas Russell at the auction room on Queen Street would sell a great variety of plain and spotted, lilac, scarlet, strawberry-colored, and yellow paduasoys, bellandine silks, sateens, galloons, ferrets, grograms, and harratines at half past ten o'clock.
Robert tied Jenny to the hitching-rail, and walked amid the hucksters to see what they had to sell; by observation he could ascertain the state of the market, and govern himself accordingly. After interviewing the hucksters he entered a store.
"No, I don't want any cheese," said the first on whom he called.
"The market is glutted," replied the second.
"If it were a little later in the season I would talk with you," was the answer of the third.
"I've got more on hand now than I know what to do with," said the fourth.
Robert began to think he might have to take them back to Rumford. He saw a sign, "John Hancock, Successor to Thomas Hancock," and remembered that his father had traded there, and that John Hancock was associated with Sam Adams and Doctor Warren in resisting the aggressions of the king's ministers. Mr. Hancock was not in the store, but would soon be there. The clerk said he would look at what Robert had to sell, put on his hat, stepped to the wagon, stood upon the thills, held a cheese to his nose, pressed it with his thumb, tapped it with a gimlet, tasted it, and smacked his lips.