ing water. Them
pies is uncertain, anyway, whatever kind you buy. I've seen a man get
off a lot a week old, just with the dodge of hot spiced gravy poured out
of an oil can into a hole in the lid, and that gravy no more'n a little
brown flour and water; but the spice did it. The cat's-meat men knows;
oh, yes! they knows what becomes of what's left when Saturday night
comes, though I've naught to say ag'in' the cat's-meat men, for it's a
respectable business enough.

"I've thought of other ways. There's the baked-potato men, but the
'ansome can and fixin's for keeping 'em 'ot is what costs, you see.
Trotters is profitable, too, if you've a start, that is, though it's
women mostly that 'andles trotters, blest if I know why! I've a cousin
in the boiled pudding business--meat puddings and fruit, too;--but it's
all going out, along of the bakers that don't give poor folks a chance.
They has their big coppers, and boils up their puddings by the 'undred;
but I dare say there's no more need o' street-sellers, for folks go to
shops for most things now. She's in Leather Lane, this cousin o' mine,
and makes plum-duff as isn't to be beat; but she sells Saturday nights
mostly, and for Sunday dinners. Ginger nuts goes off well, but there
again the shops 'as you, and unless you can make a great show, with
brass things shining to put your eyes out, and a stall that looks as
well as a shop, you're nowhere. There's no chance for the poor anyhow,
it seems to me; for even if you get a start, there's always some one
with more money to do the thing better, and so take the bread out of
your mouth. But 'better' 's only more show often, and me wife can't be
beat for tastiness, whether it's hot eels or pea soup, and I'll say that
long as I stand."

So many small trades have been ruined by the larger shops taking them
up, that the street-seller's case becomes daily a more complicated one,
and the making a living by old-fashioned and time-honored methods almost
impossible. It is all part of the general problem of the day, and the
street-sellers, whether costers or those of lower degree, look forward
apprehensively to changes which seem on the way, and puzzle their
untaught minds as to why each avenue of livelihood seems more and more
barred against them. For the poorest there seems only a helpless, dumb
acquiescence in the order of things which they are powerless to change;
but the looker-on, who watches the mass of misery crowding London
street