I find it impossible to separate these two headings; for the habits of the costermonger are not domestic. His busy life is passed in the markets or the streets, and as his leisure is devoted to the beer-shop, the dancing-room, or the theatre, we must look for his habits to his demeanor at those places. Home has few attractions to a man whose life is a street-life. Even those who are influenced by family ties and affections, prefer to "home"--indeed that word is rarely mentioned among them--the conversation, warmth, and merriment of the beer-shop, where they can take their ease among their "mates." Excitement or amusement are indispensable to uneducated men. Of beer-shops resorted to by costermongers, and principally supported by them, it is computed that there are 400 in London. Those who meet first in the beer-shop talk over the state of trade and of the markets, while the later comers enter at once into what may be styled the serious business of the evening--amusement. Business topics are discussed in a most peculiar style. One man takes the pipe from his mouth and says, "Bill made a doogheno[6] hit this morning." "Jem," says another, to a man just entering, "you'll stand a top o' reeb?"[7] "On,"[8] answers Jem, "I've had a trosseno tol,[9] and have been doing dab."[10] If any strangers are present, the conversation is still further clothed in slang, so as to be unintelligible even to the partially initiated. The evident puzzlement of any listener is of course gratifying to the costermonger's vanity for he feels that he possesses a knowledge peculiarly his own. [Footnote 6: First rate.] [Footnote 7: Pot of beer.] [Footnote 8: No.] [Footnote 9: Bad luck.] [Footnote 10: Badly.]