Wednesbury’s blast-furnaces, foundries, iron and brass and steel tube works, and manufacture of railway wheels and axles support the place, now that coal is not so plentifully got. The quantities of railway material may not surprise one, but feelings of astonishment arise on contemplation of the tubing produced—tubing for bicycles, bedsteads, water-pipes, gas-mains, and for many other purposes known only to specialists in these matters; tubing from gauges as slender as a lead-pencil to a size ample enough for one to crawl into, if so minded. All the world, it might be thought from a sight of these things, has an insatiable appetite for tubes! The coal trade is not so completely exhausted but that pit-men are a common enough sight in Wednesbury, and pit-girls too, or rather pit-bank lasses; gentle creatures who sort and pick the coal over at the pit’s mouth, and have muscles strong enough to fell an ox. It is not known when a lass of the pit-bank ceases to be a lass; probably they always remain so, just as postboys were, and “Cape boys” are, nominally juveniles for the term of their natural lives. Let it not, however, be thought that the pit-lass is being made fun of: it is done here in print as little as it is likely to be within reach of her brawny arm. A curious revival of old customs here is the trade of the “coal-jagger,” a peripatetic retailer of coals to the poorer classes. The moneyed man may have his coals in by the ton, but the working-man buys his by the pony or donkey load of the jagger, who may be seen in the streets leading a patient and depressed animal hitched up to three or more odd little three-wheeled trucks, coupled together like a miniature mineral-train. Each truck contains about a sackful of coals, offered direct from the pit’s mouth at a price low enough to suit modest weekly exchequers. VIII Down-hill from Wednesbury Market Place, and thence rising to Cock Heath and Moxley, the road runs between rubbish-heaps; a scene of desolation that, however ill it may be to live near to, makes a not unpleasing picture in a sketch, taken at a backward glance, with the town grouped on a curving sky-line. Moxley, perhaps, hints at decayed trade in the sign of the mean little “Struggler” inn. [Illustration: WEDNESBURY.]