Miss Mitford has given us many a racy description of the type of small tradespeople of the period. Here is one of them:— “The greatest man in these parts (I use the word in the sense of Louis-le-Gros, not Louis-le-Grand) is our worthy neighbour Stephen Lane, the grazier ex-butcher of Belford. Nothing so big hath been seen since Lambert the gaoler or the Durham ox. “When he walks he overfills the pavement and is more difficult to pass than a link of full-dressed misses or a chain of becloaked dandies.... Chairs crack under him, couches rock, bolsters groan and floors tremble.... “Tailors, although he was a liberal and punctual paymaster, dreaded his custom. It was not only the quantity of material that he took, and yet that cloth universally called ‘broad’ was not broad enough for him; it was not only the stuff but the work—the sewing, stitching, plaiting and button-holing without end. The very shears grew weary of their labours.” For a contrast to this personage we have “little Miss Philly Firkin the china woman,” whose shop stood in a narrow twisting lane called Oriel Street. This street was cribbed and confined on one side by the remains of an old monastic building, and after winding round the churchyard of St. Stephens with an awkward curve it finally abutted upon the market-place. So popular was this “incommodious avenue of shops” that nobody dreamt of visiting Belford without desiring to purchase something there, so that “horse-people and foot-people jostled upon its pavement,” whilst “coaches and phaetons ran against each other in the road.” Of all the shops the prettiest and most sought after was that of Miss Philly Firkin. “She herself was in appearance most fit to be its inhabitant, being a trim, prim little woman, whose dress hung about her in stiff, regular folds, very like the drapery of a china shepherdess on a mantelpiece, and whose pink and white complexion ... had the same professional hue. Change her spruce cap for a wide-brimmed hat and the damask napkin which she flourished in wiping her wares for a china crook and the figure in question might have passed for a miniature of the mistress. In one respect they differed. The china shepherdess was a silent personage. Miss Philadelphia was not; on the contrary, she was reckoned to make ... as good a use of her tongue as any woman, gentle or simple, in the whole town of Belford.” Miss Mitford describes another female shop-keeper of those days, “a reduced gentlewoman by name Mrs. Martin, who endeavoured to eke out a small annuity by letting lodgings at eight shillings a week, and by keeping a toyshop. The whole stock (of the little shop)—fiddles, drums, balls, dolls and shuttle-cocks—might be easily appraised at under eight pounds, including a stately rocking-horse, the poor widow’s _cheval de bataille_, which had occupied one side of Mrs. Martin’s shop from the time of her setting up in business, and still continued to keep his station, uncheapened by her thrifty customers.”