dainties, or the "sheepest pargains," is occasionally heard the guttural utterance of the Erse tongue, for the "native Irish," as they are sometimes called, are in possession of some portion of the street-traffic of Petticoat-lane, the original Rag Fair. The savour of the place is moreover peculiar. There is fresh fish, and dried fish, and fish being fried in a style peculiar to the Jews; there is the fustiness of old clothes; there is the odour from the pans on which (still in the Jewish fashion) frizzle and hiss pieces of meat and onions; puddings are boiling and enveloped in steam; cakes with strange names are hot from the oven; tubs of big pickled cucumbers or of onions give a sort of acidity to the atmosphere; lemons and oranges abound; and altogether the scene is not only such as can only be seen in London, but only such as can be seen in this one part of the metropolis.

When I treat of the street-Jews, I shall have information highly curious to communicate, and when I come to the fifth division of my present subject, I shall more particularly describe Petticoatlane, as the head-quarters of the second-hand clothes business.

I have here alluded to the character of this quarter as being one much resorted to formerly, and still largely used by the sellers of secondhand metal goods. Here I was informed that a strong-built man, known as Jack, or (appropriately enough) as Iron Jack, had, until his death six or seven years ago, one of the best-stocked barrows in London. This, in spite of remonstrances, and by a powerful exercise of his strength, the man lifted, as it were, on to the narrow foot-path, and every passer-by had his attention directed almost perforce to the contents of the barrow, for he must make a "detour" to advance on his way. One of this man's favourite pitches was close to the lofty walls of what, before the change in their charter, was one of the East India Company's vast warehouses. The contrast to any one who indulged a thought on the subject—and there is great food for thought in Petticoat-lane-was striking enough. Here towered the store-house of costly teas, and silks, and spices, and indigo; while at its foot was carried on the most minute, and apparently worthless of all street-trades, rusty screws and nails, such as only few would care to pick up in the street, being objects of earnest bargaining!

An experienced man in the business, who thought he was "turned 50, or somewhere about that," gave me the following account of his trade, his customers, &c.

"I've been in most street-trades," he said, "and was born to it, like, for my mother was a raggatherer-not a bad business once-and I helped her. I never saw my father, but he was a soldier, and it's supposed lost his life in foreign parts. No, I don't remember ever having heard what foreign parts, and it don't matter. Well, perhaps, this is about as tidy a trade for a bit of bread as any that's going now. Perhaps selling fish may be better, but that's to a man what knows fish well. I can't say I ever did. I'm more a dab at cooking it (with a laugh). I like a bloater best

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on what's an Irish gridiron. Do you know what that is, sir? I know, though I'm not Irish, but I married an Irish wife, and as good a woman as ever was a wife. It's done on the tongs, sir, laid across the fire, and the bloater's laid across the tongs. Some says it's best turned and turned very quick on the coals themselves, but the tongs is best, for you can raise or lower." [My informant seemed interested in his account of this and other modes of cookery, which I need not detail.] "This is really a very trying trade. O, I mean it tries a man's patience so. Why, it was in Easter week a man dressed like a gentleman-but I don't think he was a real gentleman-looked out some bolts, and a hammer head, and other things, odds and ends, and they came to 10 d. He said he'd give 6d. 'Sixpence!' says I; why d' you think I stole 'em? Well,' says he, 'if I didn't think you'd stole 'em, I shouldn't have come to you.' I don't think he was joking. Well, sir, we got to high words, and I said, Then I'm d-d if you have them for less than 1s.' And a bit of a crowd began to gather, they was most boys, but the p'liceman came up, as slow as you please, and so my friend flings down 1s., and puts the things in his pocket and marches off, with a few boys to keep him company. That's the way one's temper's tried. Well, it's hard to say what sells best. A latch-lock and keys goes off quick. I've had them from 2d. to 6d.; but it's only the lower-priced things as cells now in any trade. sorts of tools. Well, not saws so much as such things as screwdrivers, or hammers, or choppers, or tools that if they 're rusty people can clean up theirselves. Saws ain't so easy to manage; bedkeys is good. No, I don't clean the metal up unless it's very bad; I think things don't sell so well that way. People's jealous that they're just done up on purpose to deceive, though they may cost only 1d. or 2d. There's that cheesecutter now, it's getting rustier and there'll be very likely a better chance to sell it. This is how it is, sir, I know. You see if a man's going to buy old metal, and he sees it all rough and rusty, he says to himself, Well, there's no gammon about it; I can just see what it is.' Then folks like to clean up a thing theirselves, and it's as if it was something made from their own cleverness. That was just my feeling, sir, when I bought old metals for my own use, before I was in the trade, and I goes by that. O, working people's by far my best customers. Many of 'em's very fond of jobbing about their rooms or their houses, and they come to such as me. Then a many has fancies for pig ons, or rabbits, or poultry, or dogs, and they mostly make up the places for them their selves, and as money 's an object, why them sort of fancy people buys hinges, and locks, and screws, and hammers, and what they want of me. A clever mechanic can turn his hand to most things that he wants for his own use. I know a shoemaker that makes beautiful rabbit-hutches and sells them along with his prize cattle, as I calls his great big long-eared rabbits. Perhaps I take 2s. 6d. or 3s. a day, and it's about half profit.

Bolts is a fairish stock, and so is all

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Yes, this time of the year I make good 10s. 6d. a week, but in winter not 18. a day. That would be very poor pickings for two people to live on, and I can't do without my drop of beer, but my wife has constant work with a first-rate laundress at Mile End, and so we rub on, for we've no family living."

This informant told me further of the way in which the old metal stocks sold in the streets were provided; but that branch of the subject relates to street-buying. Some of the street-sellers, however, buy their stocks of the shopkeepers.

I find a difficulty in estimating the number of the second-hand metal-ware street-sellers. Many of the stalls or barrows are the property of the marine-store shopkeepers, or old metal dealers (marine stores being about the only things the marine-store men do not sell), and these are generally placed near the shop, being indeed a portion of its contents out of doors. Some of the marine-store men (a class of traders, by the by, not superior to street-sellers, making no "odious comparison as to the honesty of the two), when they have purchased largely-the refuse iron for instance after a house has been pulled down-establish two or three pitches in the street, confiding the stalls or barrows to their wives and children. I was told by several in the trade that there were 200 old metal sellers in the streets, but from the best information at my command not more than 50 appear to be strictly street-sellers, unconnected with shop-keeping. Estimating a weekly receipt, per individual, of 15s. (half being profit), the yearly street outlay among this body alone amounts to 1950.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND
METAL TRAYS, &c.

THERE are still some few portions of the old metal trade in the streets which require specific mention.

Among these is the sale of second-hand trays, occasionally with such things as bread-baskets. Instead of these wares, however, being matters of daily traffic, they are offered in the streets only at intervals, and generally on the Saturday and Monday evenings, while a few are hawked to public-houses. An Irishman, a rather melancholy looking man, but possessed of some humour, gave me the following account. His dress was a worn suit, such as masons work in; but I have seldom seen so coarse, and never on an Irishman of his class, except on a Sunday, so clean a shirt, and he made as free a display of it as if it were the choicest cambric. He washed it, he told me, with his own hands, as he had neither wife, nor mother, nor sister. "I was a cow-keeper's man, your honour," he said, "and he sent milk to Dublin. I thought I might do betthur, and I got to Liverpool, and walked here. Have I done betthur, is it? Sorry a betthur. Would I like to returren to Dublin? Well, perhaps, plaze God, I'll do betthur here yit. I've sould a power of different things in the sthreets, but I'm off for counthry work now. I have a few therrays left if your honour wants such a thing. I first sould

a few for a man I lodged along wid in Kent-street, when he was sick, and so I got to know the therrade. He tould me to say, and it's the therruth, if anybody said,They're only secondhand,' that they was all the betthur for that, for if they hadn't been real good therrays at first, they would niver have lived to be second-hand ones. I calls the bigghur therrays butlers, and the smhaller, waithers. It's a poor therrade. One woman'll say, 'Pooh! ould-fashioned things.' Will, thin, ma'am,' I'll say, 'a good thing like this is niver ould-fashioned, no more than the bhutiful mate and berrid, and the bhutiful new praties a coming in, that you'll be atin off of it, and thratin' your husband to, God save him. No lady iver goes to supper widout her therray.' Yes, indeed, thin, and it is a poor therrade. It's the bhutiful therrays I've sould for 6d. I buys them of a shop which dales in sich things. The perrofit! Sorry a perrofit is there in it at all at all; but I thries to make 4d. out of 1s. If I makes 6d. of a night it's good worruk."

Wo

These trays are usually carried under the arm, and are sometimes piled on a stool or small stand, in a street market. The prices are from 2d. to 10d., sometimes 1s. The stronger descriptions are sold to street-sellers to display their goods upon, as much as to any other class. men and children occasionally sell them, but it is one of the callings which seems to be disappearing from the streets. From two men, who were familiar with this and other second-hand trades, I heard the following reasons assigned for the decadence. One man thought it was owing to "swag-trays" being got up so common and so cheap, but to look stunning well," at least as long as the shininess lasted. The other contended that poor working people had enough to do nowa-days to get something to eat, without thinking of a tray to put it on.

If 20 persons, and that I am told is about the number of sellers, take in the one or two nights' sale 4s. a week each, on second-hand trays (33 per cent. being the rate of profit), the street expenditure is 2087. in a year.

In other second-hand metal articles there is now and then a separate trade. Two or three sets of small fire-irons may be offered in a streetmarket on a Saturday night; or a small stock of flat and Italian irons for the laundresses, who work cheap and must buy second-hand; or a collection of tools in the same way; but these are accidental sales, and are but ramifications from the general "old metal trade that I have described. Perhaps, in the sale of these second-hand articles, 20 people may be regularly employed, and 3001. yearly may be taken.

In Petticoat-lane, Rosemary-lane, Whitecrossstreet, Ratcliff-highway, and in the street-markets generally, are to be seen men, women, and children selling dinner knives and forks, razors, pocket-knives, and scissors. The pocket-knives and scissors are kept well oiled, so that the weather does not rust them. These goods have been mostly repaired, ground, and polished for streetcommerce. The women and children selling these