y morning,
you have no need to be told that this is the East London Slave
Market--supposing you knew such a thing as a slave market was to be seen
in East London at all.

There was, indeed, nothing resembling Byron's graphic description in
"Don Juan." Our English slaves were all apparently of one nation, and
there were no slave merchants. The hundred young ladies and gentlemen,
of all ages from seven to seventeen, were, as they would have expressed
it, "on their own hook." Ranged under the dead brick wall of the railway
arch, there was a generally mouldy appearance about them. Instead of a
picturesque difference of colour, there was on every visage simply a
greater or less degree of that peculiar neutral tint, the unmistakable
unlovely hue of London dirt. In this respect, too, they differed from
the fresh country lads and lasses one sees at a hiring in the North.
They were simply male and female City Arabs, with that superabundant
power of combining business and pleasure which characterizes their race.
The young gentlemen, in the intervals of business--and it seemed to be
all interval and no business--devoted themselves to games at buttons.
Each of the young ladies--I am afraid to say _how_ young--had her
cavalier, and applied herself to very pronounced flirtation. The
language of one and all certainly fulfilled the baptismal promise of
their sponsors, if the poor little waifs ever had any--for it was very
"vulgar tongue" indeed; and there was lots of it. The great sensation
of the morning was a broken window in an unoffending tradesman's shop--a
far from unusual occurrence, as I learnt from the sufferer. This led to
a slave hunt on the part of the single policeman who occasionally showed
himself to keep as quiet as might be the seething mass of humanity; and
the young lady or gentleman who was guilty of the damage was "off
market" for the morning--while the suffering tradesman was assailed with
a volley of abuse, couched in strongest Saxon, for meekly protesting
against the demolition of his window-pane.

The scene was most characteristic--very unlike the genteel West End
Servants' Registry, where young ladies and gentlemen's gentlemen saunter
in to find places with high wages and the work "put out." It was on
Tuesday morning, and a little late in the day, that I timed my visit;
and I was informed that the Market was somewhat flat. Certainly, one
could not apply to it the technicalities of the Stock Exchange, and say