ff _paternosters_ of the devout but hasty Catholic, who
says as many as possible in a given space of time. Be this as it may, it
is quite true that pattering is an essential feature of any specially
successful street-calling, and equally true that no woman has yet
appeared who possesses the gift.

In spite of this nearly fatal deficiency, innumerable women pursue
street trades, and, notwithstanding exposure and privation and the
scantiest of earnings, have every advantage over their sisters of the
needle. Rheumatism, born of bad diet and the penetrating rawness and
fogs of eight months of the English year, is their chief enemy; but as a
whole they are a strong, hardy, and healthy set of workers, who shudder
at the thought of bending all day over machine or needle, and thank the
fate that first turned them toward a street-calling. So conservative,
however, is working England, that the needlewoman, even at starvation
point, feels herself superior to a street-seller; and the latter is
quite conscious of this feeling, and resents it accordingly. With many
the adoption of such employment is the result of accident, and the women
in it divide naturally into four classes: (1) The wives of
street-sellers; (2) Mechanics, or laborers' wives who go out
street-selling while their husbands are at work, in order to swell the
family income; (3) The widows of former street-sellers; (4) Single
women.

Trades that necessitate pushing a heavy barrow, and, indeed, most of
those involving the carrying of heavy weights, are in the hands of men,
and also the more skilled trades, such as the selling of books or
stationery,--in short, the business in which patter is demanded.
Occasionally there is a partnership, and man and wife carry on the same
trade, she aiding him with his barrow, but for the most part they choose
different occupations. In the case of one man in Whitechapel who worked
for a sweater; the wife sold water-cresses morning and evening, while
the wife of a bobbin turner had taken to small-wares, shoe-laces, etc.
as a help. Both tailor and turner declared that, if things went on as
they were at present, they should take to the streets also; for earnings
were less and less, and they were "treated like dirt, and worse."

The women whose trades have been noted are dealers in fish, shrimps, and
winkles, and sometimes oysters, fruit, and vegetables,--fruit
predominating, orange-women and girls being as much a feature of London
street