crust of a penny-pie to a quartern loaf is a mystery which we have not yet succeeded in penetrating, we are wanting in the elements of an exact calculation. The establishment of these shops has by degrees prodigiously increased the number of pie-eaters and the consumption of pies. Thousands and tens of thousands who would decline the handling of a scalding hot morsel in the public street, will yet steal to the corner of a shop, and in front of an old play-bill, delicately dandling the tit-bit on their finger-tips till it cools to the precise temperature at which it is so delicious to swallow--"snatch a fearful joy." The trades man, too, in the immediate vicinity, soon learns to appreciate the propinquity of the pie-shop, in the addition it furnishes to a cold dinner, and for half the sum it would have cost him if prepared in his own kitchen. Many a time and oft have we dropped in, upon the strength of a general invitation, at the dinner-table of an indulgent bibliopole, and recognized the undeniable _patés_ of "over the way" following upon the heels of the cold sirloin. With artisans out of work, and with town-travelers of small trade, the pie-shop is a halting-place, its productions presenting a cheap substitute for a dinner. Few purchases are made before twelve o'clock in the day; in fact the shutters are rarely pulled down much before eleven; yet even then business is carried on for nearly twenty hours out of the twenty-four. About noon the current of custom sets in, and all hands are busy till four or five o'clock; after which there is a pause, or rather a relaxation, until evening, when the various bands of operatives, as they are successively released from work, again renew the tide. As these disappear, the numberless nightly exhibitions, lecture-rooms, mechanics' institutes, concerts, theatres, and casinos, pour forth their motley hordes, of whom a large and hungry section find their way to the pie-house as the only available resource--the public-houses being shut up for the night, and the lobster-rooms, oyster saloons, "shades," "coal-holes," and "cider-cellars," too expensive for the multitude. After these come the cab-drivers who, having conveyed to their homes the more moneyed classes of sight-seers and play-goers, return to their stands in the vicinity of the shop, and now consider that they may conscientiously indulge in a refreshment of eel-pies, winding up with a couple of "fruiters," to the amount at least of the sum of which they may have been able to cheat their fares.