Let us, however, hope that those who really "starve" are few in number. For the barrow-men, who pay small rates as compared to shop-owners, give good value in return for their money, with much homely wit and caustic joking thrown in; and poor, indeed, must be the household that cannot enjoy, on Saturday night, their something "'ot with innions," their portion of fried fish, or of sheeps' trotters. Of course, when dealing with barrows, the buyer must have as many eyes as possible. "Let the buyer beware" may be specially said of this class of shopping. It were perhaps too much to expect, as Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes seems to suggest, that fruit, when you buy it, should "grow bigger _downwards_ through the box"; yet, perhaps, when you see a pile of luscious pears or apples heaped up temptingly in front of you, you need not allow yourself to be fobbed off with a few rotten ones, shovelled up carelessly from unseen depths behind. Much art is necessary when dealing with a barrow-man, who, as often as not, really respects the careful and fastidious shopper, and retorts to her complaints with a good-natured joke. If a trifle less distant in manner than his West-End brother, he is certainly more affectionate, and dubs his customer "my dear." But, in the street markets, it is usually the meat-huckster who is the greatest "character." His voice may be heard above the general din: "Buy my pretty meat," he shouts from his stall to the red-armed housewives; "now, lydies, don't go a fingerin' it _too_ much, or it'll taste er kid gloves when you go to eat it.... 'Ave that there sheep's 'ed, Miss? wy, certingly; that wuz a _'appy_ sheep, that wuz! jest look at the smile 'e's got on 'im; know'd you wuz a-goin' to buy 'im, 'e did.... There now, my dear! look wot you've been and done, rolled that there bit 'o' shin in the mud, it'll 'ave to go for _cats'_ meat now," &c. &c. This kind of "patter," continued _ad libitum_, seems to be regarded as the slum butcher's special _métier_. In Brick Lane, Spitalfields,--not the Jewish "Ghetto," but the purely English quarter,--there is, moreover, a Sunday morning "poor man's market." It is usually, in more select London highways, more or less difficult to make purchases, be they never so necessary, on Sunday morning. I remember, indeed, a despairing search for food on such an occasion (food necessitated by the arrival of unexpected visitors), which ended in the obtaining, almost by force, of a couple of boiled chickens from a small Italian restaurant, with the added injunction to "keep them well hidden" from the eye of the law on the homeward journey. In the East End, however, it is very different. Brick Lane, an unsavoury region, described by the late Mr. Montagu Williams as "a land of beer and blood," presents on Sunday morning a strange sight to the uninitiated. Here is its picture by an eye-witness: