very intimate
relation between good living and good reading. The practical person, the
wary pedant, and the supercritical will scoff at this, but let it stand.

The "cigar divans" and "chess rooms" were modifications, in a way, of the
"coffee-house," though serving mainly evening refreshment, coffee and a
"fine Havana" being ample for the needs of him who would ponder three or
four hours over a game of chess.

Of the stilly night, there was another class of peripatetic caterers, the
"sandwich man," the "baked 'tato man," the old women who served "hot
coffee" to coachmen, and the more ambitious "coffee-stall," which must
have been the progenitor of the "Owl Lunch" wagons of the United States.

The baked potato man was of Victorian growth, and speedily became a
recognized and popular functionary of his kind. His apparatus was not
cumbrous, and was gaudy with brightly polished copper, and a headlight
that flared like that of a modern locomotive. He sprang into being
somewhere in the neighbourhood of St. George's Fields, near "Guy's," Lant
Street, and Marshalsea of Dickenesque renown, and soon spread his
operations to every part of London.

The food supply of London and such social and economic problems as arise
out of it are usually ignored by the mere guide-book, and, like enough, it
will be assumed by many to have little to do with the purport of a volume
such as the present. As a matter of fact, in one way or another, it has a
great deal to do with the life of the day, using the word in its broadest
sense.

England, as is well recognized by all, is wholly subservient to the
conditions of trade, so far as edible commodities are concerned,
throughout the world. Its beef, its corn, and its flour mainly come from
America. Its teas, coffees, and spices mostly from other foreign nations,
until latterly, when India and Ceylon have come to the fore with regard to
the first named of these. Its mutton from New Zealand or Australia, and
even potatoes from France, butter and eggs from Denmark and Brittany,
until one is inclined to wonder what species of food product is really
indigenous to Britain. At any rate, London is a vast _caravanserai_ which
has daily to be fed and clothed with supplies brought from the outer
world.

In spite of the world-wide fame of the great markets of "Covent Garden,"
"Smithfield," and "Billingsgate," London is wofully deficient in those
intermediaries between the wholesaler and the consumer, the