se what they
will buy, and from midnight onward all is bustle and business. Some of
the meat comes to the market in vans, but the greater part comes by
train. Right under the market there is a place scooped out in the earth
like a cellar, and the railway lines run in under there, and then from
the vans standing on the lines it is easy to lift the meat up into the
market. Outside there is a great square, and in the early morning this
square is filled with carts of every kind waiting to carry away the meat
which the butchers buy. But all the meat does not come from England. A
great deal of it comes from over the sea, from Australia and New
Zealand, for England herself would never have enough to feed all her
people. Close to the market at Smithfield there is another, where
nothing but poultry is sold. Rows and rows of dead chickens go every day
to fill all the shops--good chickens and bad chickens, the chickens that
obeyed their mothers and the chickens that didn't; they come here just
the same to supply the wants of the people of London.

The flower market is very pretty, and it is a treat to go there. If you
were grown up and had been to a ball in London, you might see, when you
were coming back in the early morning, a cart piled high with cabbages,
and a sleepy-looking man sitting on the shafts, while a dim lantern hung
beside him. This is one of the carts bringing in the vegetables that
London wants for her dinner next day. London itself is like a great
ogre--eating, always eating. You remember the story of the giant who
used to be quiet so long as the people brought him enough to eat? And
how all the people in the country used to work day and night to bring in
cartloads of things, for fear if they allowed him to go hungry he would
eat them instead? The giant could swallow up those cartloads as if they
were spoonfuls. And so it is with London. Men work day and night
bringing, always bringing, cartloads of meat and fruit and vegetables,
and London swallows them all up; and next day there are more carts and
more food from the country, and so it goes on always.

In the middle of the night, when most people are fast asleep, the man
who wants to sell his flowers or vegetables at Covent Garden Market must
be up and out. In the dim light he harnesses his horse and lights his
lamp. Perhaps his faithful dog watches him, and runs about quite pleased
to be going for a walk, even if it is in the middle of the night. Then
the man