, banquettings and
processions, that read like fairy tales in this sober nineteenth century;
and we would believe in their utility, were it no other than to afford a
bird's eye view of the busy scenes of homely traffic going on upon a
market day, amongst the accumulated heaps of provisions for the daily
wants of life.

_The wants of life_! Who amongst us knows the meaning of the words, the
_reality_ they hide? Who that has numbered among the wants of life, the
gold to purchase luxury or ornament, place or power, the ways and means
to shine and glitter in the world, where men are prized by what they
_seem_, rather than what they are; the wherewith to pay the idly
accumulated debts, incurred through mean attempts to cover the rags of
poverty, or decent homely garments of honesty, with tinsel mockeries of
wealth's trappings? Who amongst these knows aught of the meaning of the
_wants of life_? Ask him who has known _Hunger_, has been face to face
with want and starvation, has shared with loved and loving ones, weak
babes, and sick and helpless mothers, the task of driving these unbidden
guests away, has felt the gnawing pangs of their demon power, while
gazing upon plenty, upon the wealth of food and sustenance displayed
before his eyes! Is it not more marvellous and strange, that such piles
as a market displays should ever be permitted to lie safe within the
arrow-shot of gaunt and wasting poverty, than that the annals of our
police reports should now and then record how poverty and crime sometimes
go hand in hand?

But to look more in detail at the picture offered on a summer market-day.
There to the left sit congregated together the vendors of the far-famed
staple produce of the country farm-yards, sheltered from the heat by the
artificial grove of variegated umbrellas, serving, or attempting to
serve, the double purpose of protection from the sun in summer, and the
rain in winter and summer. The poultry "pads" and butter-stalls are one.
Turkeys, and geese, and fowls, and sausages, and little round white
cheeses, share the baskets and benches with eggs and _pints_ of butter,
in the land where that commodity is sold by _liquid_ measure, whose
equivalent is somewhere near about 1lb. 3 oz.

There is a legend that one who sits here is the heroine of an old tale,
which goes to the effect that "once upon a time," when the inspector came
his round to test the weights of all the measured pints, the old lady was
observed