too, no credit being given)--_in loco_, and are therefore in a condition to guarantee the truth of what we record. With few exceptions (we include ourselves among the number), there are no theoretical philosophers among the frequenters of the penny-pie shop. The philosophy of bun-eating may be very profound, and may present, as we think it does, some difficult points; but the philosophy of penny-pie eating is absolutely next to _nil_. The customer of the pie-shop is a man (if he is not a boy) with whom a penny is a penny, and a pie is a pie, who, when he has the former to spend or the latter to eat, goes through the ceremony like one impressed with the settled conviction that he has business in hand which it behoves him to attend to. Look at him as he stands in the centre of the floor, erect as a grenadier, turning his busy mouth full upon the living tide that rushes along Holborn! Of shame or confusion of face in connection with the enviable position in which he stands he has not the remotest conception, and could as soon be brought to comprehend the _differential calculus_ as to entertain a thought of it. What, we ask, would philosophy do for him? Still every customer is not so happily organized, and so blissfully insensible to the attacks of false shame; and for such as are unprepared for the public gaze, or constitutionally averse from it, a benevolent provision is made by a score of old play-bills stuck against the adverse wall, or swathing the sacks of flour which stand ready for use, and which they may peruse, or affect to peruse, in silence, munching their pennyworths the while. The main body of the pie-eaters are, however, perfectly at their ease, and pass the very few minutes necessary for the discussion of their purchases in bandying compliments with three or four good-looking lasses, the very incarnations of good-temper and cleanly tidiness, who from morn to night are as busy as bees in extricating the pies from their metallic moulds, as they are demanded by the customers. These assistants lead no lazy life, but they are without exception plump and healthy-looking, and would seem (if we are to believe the report of an employer) to have an astonishing tendency to the parish church of the district in which they officiate, our informant having been bereaved of three by marriage in the short space of six months. Relays are necessary in most establishments on the main routes, as the shops are open all night long, seldom closing much before three in the morning when situated in the neighborhood of a theatre or a cab-stand. Of the amount of business done in the course of a year it is not easy to form an estimate. Some pie-houses are known to consume as much flour as a neighboring baker standing in the same track. The baker makes ninety quartern loaves from the sack of flour, and could hardly make a living upon less than a dozen sacks a week; but as the proportion borne by the