vehicles of less note, all roll off the ground by a quarter
after ten o'clock or so; and the ladies and their servants, with some
few exceptions, are left in undisputed possession of home, while not a
footfall of man or beast is heard in the sunshiny quiet of the street.

The quiet, however, is broken before long by a peculiar and suggestive
cry. We do not hear it yet ourselves, but Stalker, our black cat and
familiar, has caught the well-known accents, and with a characteristic
crooning noise, and a stiff, perpendicular erection of tail, he sidles
towards the door, demanding, as plainly as possible, to be let out.
Yes, it is the cats-meat man. 'Ca' me-e-et--me-yet--me-e-yet!' fills
the morning air, and arouses exactly thirty responsive feline
voices--for there is a cat to every house--and points thirty aspiring
tails to the zenith. As many hungry tabbies, sables, and
tortoise-shells as can get out of doors, are trooping together with
arched backs upon the pavement, following the little pony-cart, the
cats' commissariat equipage, and each one, anxious for his daily
allowance, contributing most musically his quota to the general
concert. We do not know how it is, but the cats-meat man is the most
unerring and punctual of all those peripatetic functionaries who
undertake to cater for the consumption of the public. The baker, the
butcher, the grocer, the butterman, the fishmonger, and the coster,
occasionally forget your necessities, or omit to call for your
orders--the cats-meat man never. Other traders, too, dispense their
stock by a sliding-scale, and are sometimes out of stock altogether:
Pussy's provider, on the contrary, sticks to one price from year's end
to year's end, and never, in the memory of the oldest Grimalkin, was
known to disappoint a customer. A half-penny for a cat's breakfast has
been the regulation-price ever since the horses of the metropolis
began to submit to the boiling process for the benefit of the feline
race.

By the time the cats have retired to growl over their allowance in
private, the daily succession of nomadic industrials begin to lift up
their voices, and to defile slowly along Our Terrace, stopping now and
then to execute a job or effect a sale when an opportunity presents
itself. Our limits will not allow us to notice them all, but we must
devote a few paragraphs to those without whom our picture would be
incomplete.

First comes an ingenious lass of two or three-and-twenty, with a