the same to
them. But the true, transplanted Irish hardly ever patch except in the
extremest necessity, when the garment would otherwise fall apart.
Ordinarily the rags of the shirt protrude through the rents in the coat
or trousers. They wear, as Thomas Carlyle says,--{67}

"A suit of tatters, the getting on or off which is said to be a
difficult operation, transacted only in festivals and the high tides
of the calendar."

The Irish have introduced, too, the custom previously unknown in England,
of going barefoot. In every manufacturing town there is now to be seen a
multitude of people, especially women and children, going about barefoot,
and their example is gradually being adopted by the poorer English.

As with clothing, so with food. The workers get what is too bad for the
property-holding class. In the great towns of England everything may be
had of the best, but it costs money; and the workman, who must keep house
on a couple of pence, cannot afford much expense. Moreover, he usually
receives his wages on Saturday evening, for, although a beginning has
been made in the payment of wages on Friday, this excellent arrangement
is by no means universal; and so he comes to market at five or even seven
o'clock, while the buyers of the middle-class have had the first choice
during the morning, when the market teems with the best of everything.
But when the workers reach it, the best has vanished, and, if it was
still there, they would probably not be able to buy it. The potatoes
which the workers buy are usually poor, the vegetables wilted, the cheese
old and of poor quality, the bacon rancid, the meat lean, tough, taken
from old, often diseased, cattle, or such as have died a natural death,
and not fresh even then, often half decayed. The sellers are usually
small hucksters who buy up inferior goods, and can sell them cheaply by
reason of their badness. The poorest workers are forced to use still
another device to get together the things they need with their few pence.
As nothing can be sold on Sunday, and all shops must be closed at twelve
o'clock on Saturday night, such things as would not keep until Monday are
sold at any price between ten o'clock and midnight. But nine-tenths of
what is sold at ten o'clock is past using by Sunday morning, yet these
are precisely the provisions which make up the Sunday dinner of the
poorest class. The meat which the workers buy is very often past using;
but ha