han the
better-known East End. Leather Lane, one of the most crowded and
distinctive of the quarters of the poor, though comparatively little
known, has also its network of alleys and courts opening from it, and is
one of the most crowded markets in the city, rivalling even Petticoat
Lane. The latter, whose time-honored name has foolishly been changed to
Middlesex Street, is an old-clothes market, and presents one of the most
extraordinary sights in London; but the trade is chiefly in the hands
of men, though their wives usually act as assistants and determine the
quality of a garment till the masculine sense has been educated up to
the proper point. Any very small, very old, and very dirty street at any
point has its proportion of street-sellers, whose dark, grimy,
comfortless rooms are their refuge at night. Other rooms of a better
order are occupied, it may be, by some relative or child to be
supported; and higher still rank those that are counted homes, where
husband and wife meet when the day's work is done.

Like the needlewomen, the diet of the majority is meagre and poor to a
degree. The Irishwoman is much more ready to try to make the meal hot
and relishable than the Englishwoman, though even she confines herself
to cheap fish and potatoes, herring or plaice at two a penny.

A quiet, very respectable looking woman, the widow of a coster, sold
cakes of blacking and small-wares, and gave her view of this phase of
the question.

"It's cheaper, their way of doing. Oh, yes, but not so livening. I could
live cheaper on fish and potatoes than tea and bread and butter; but
that ain't it. They're more trouble, an' when you've been on your legs
all day, an' get to your bit of a home for a cup of tea, you want a bit
of rest, and you can't be cooking and fussing with fish. There's always
a neighbor to give you a jug of boiling water, if you've no time for
fire, or it's summer, and tea livens you up a bit where a herring won't.
I take mine without milk, and like it better without, and often I don't
have butter on me bread. But I get along, and, please God, I'll be able
to keep out of the 'house' to the end."

The married women fare better. The men decline to be put off with bread
and tea, and the cook-shops and cheap markets help them to what they
call good living. They buy "good block ornaments," that is, small pieces
of meat, discolored but not dirty nor tainted, which are set out for
sale on the butcher's block. Trip