While another of the tribe proclaimed aloud from east to west--and back again, "From morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve," his willingness to "_Buy, sell, or exchange Hats or Caps_." Why should the Hebrew race appear to possess a monopoly in the purchase and sale of dilapidated costumes? Why should their voices, and theirs alone, be employed in the constant iteration of the talismanic monosyllables "Old Clo'?" Is it because Judas carried the bag that all the children of Israel are to trudge through London streets to the end of their days with sack on shoulder? Artists generally represent the old clothesman with three, and sometimes four, hats, superposed one above the other. Now, although we have seen him with many hats in his hands or elsewhere, we never yet saw him with more than one hat on his head. The three-hatted clothesman, if ever he existed, is obsolete. According to Ingoldsby, however, when "Portia" pronounced the law adverse to "Shylock": "Off went his three hats, and he look'd as the cats Do, whenever a mouse has escaped from their claw." [Illustration: ANY KITCHEN-STUFF HAVE YOU MAIDS?] There was trading then going forward from house to house, which careful housewifery and a more vigilant police have banished from the daylight, if they have not extirpated it altogether. Before the shops are open and the chimneys send forth their smoke, there may be now, sometimes, seen creeping up an area a sly-looking beldam, who treads as stealthily as a cat. Under her cloak she has a pan, whose unctuous contents will some day assist in the enlightenment or purification of the world, in the form of candles or soap. But the good lady of the house, who is a late riser, knows not of the transformation that is going forward. In the old days she would have heard the cry of a maiden, with tub on head and pence in hand, of "_Any Kitchen-stuff have you Maids?_" and she probably would have dealt with her herself, or have forbidden her maids to deal. So it is with the old cry of "_Any Old Iron take Money for?_" The fellow who then went openly about with sack on back was a thief, and an encourager of thieves; he now keeps a marine-store. [Illustration: ANY OLD IRON TAKE MONEY FOR?] [Illustration: OLD LONDON SHOP.] Sir Walter Scott, in his _Fortunes of Nigel_, has left us a capital description of the shop of a London tradesman during the reign of King James in England, the shop in question being that of David Ramsay, maker of watches and horologes, within Temple-bar--a few yards eastward of St. Dunstan's church, Fleet-street, and where his apprentice, Jenkin Vincent--abbreviated to Jin Vin, when not engaged in 'prentices-riots--is crying to every likely passer-by:--