{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.028554778554778556, 'fraction_numerical': 0.002913752913752914, 'mean_word_length': 4.666666666666667, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
'Dangerous and Suspicious Trades': Wordsworth's Pedlar and the Board of Police Revenue

Her assumption that he is a pedlar causes the ‘good stranger’ to smile. He has not come to the house to sell ‘city-wares’ but in search of something to drink. As the woman shows him the way to the spring, he realizes that the stones scattered around the hut are the remnants of a temple to Venus, Goddess of Love. This recognition, and the presence of the woman’s infant son, lead the Wanderer to reflect on the relationship between the past and the present, and between life and death. The Wanderer’s smile, in other words, reveals the incongruity of the woman’s remark. In the world of Goethe’s poem, a pedlar would have neither the education to recognize the historical importance of the stones nor the sensibility to understand the commentary they offer on the lives of the humble inhabitants. Like The Wanderer, The Ruined Cottage centres on an encounter between a wanderer and a woman, though in the later work the relationship between the two develops over a series of visits. Wordsworth’s poem builds on the themes of thirst, water and love that are hinted at in Goethe’s poem, tying the well and the broken bowl to Margaret’s hope that Robert will return. But in the early versions of Wordsworth’s poem, the central character is very definitely a pedlar and there is little room for the kind of smile indulged in by Goethe’s Wanderer. By 1814, however, when The Ruined Cottage and The Pedlar were incorporated into Book 1 of The Excursion, Wordsworth had altered his protagonist’s profession slightly, preferring to make him a retired pedlar. As he puts it, with something of his usual clumsiness when over-elaborating: