Tumbledown Dick: All People and No Plot

As far back as he could recall, Tumbledown Dick had helped on his father's market gardens; in the afternoons the produce would be loaded on the cart, and at three o'clock in the morning his father would hitch up his horse, Uncle Arthur, and drive off in the dark to sell his vegetables in the great Manchester Market eight or ten miles away. But Dick, despite all his begging, had never been allowed to go until one day when his mother fell ill. This tells what befell him in Manchester: of his Uncle Henry, who kept an amazing pet shop (goldfish of all sizes and kinds were his specialty); of his Uncle Oswald Tubbs, who was a vaudeville conjurer; of Gentleman George and old "Last Chance" and all the other characters who frequented the market. Although the author may say there is no plot, the story is as teeming with action as it is with delightful Dickensian characters, of the kind that will go straight to a boy's heart. And anyone who recalls the boyhood in My Son, My Son!, or has read Heaven Lies about Us, knows that Mr. Spring remembers how it feels to be a boy.