THIS trade, like several others, as soon as the new commodities became in established demand, and sufficiently cheap, was adopted by streetsellers. It has been a regular street-trade between and years. Previously, when the covers were dearer, the street-sellers were afraid to speculate much in them; but man told me that he once sold a table-cover for , and at another time for

The goods are supplied to the street-folk principally by manufacturers—in , , Whitechapel-road, and . The venders of the glazed table-covers are generally considered among the smartest of the street-folk, as they do not sell to the poor, or in poor neighbourhoods, but "at the better sort of houses, and to the wealthier sort of people." Table-covers are now frequently disposed of by raffle. "I very seldom sell in the streets," said man, "though I evening cleared by standing near the Vinegar-works, in the City-road, and selling to gents on their way home from the city. The public-house trade is the best, and indeed in winter evenings, and after dark generally, there's no other. I get rid of more by raffling than by sale. On Saturday evening I had raffles for covers, which cost me each. I had some trouble to get for ; but I got up a raffle for the other, and it brought me ; members at each. It's just the sort of thing to get off in a raffle on Saturday night, or any time when mechanics have money. A man thinks—leastways I've thought so myself, when I've been in a public-house raffle—now I've spent more money than I ought to, and there's the old woman to face; but if I win the raffle, and take the thing home, why my money has gone to buy a nice thing, and not for drink." I may remark that in nearly all raffles got up in this manner, the article raffled for is generally something coveted by a working man, but not so indispensably necessary to him, that he feels justified in expending his money upon it. This fact seems well enough known to the street-sellers who frequent publichouses with their wares. I inquired of the informant in question if he had ever tried to get up a raffle of his table-covers in a coffee-shop as well as a public-house. "Never, with table-covers," he said, "but I have with other things, and find it's no go. In a coffee-shop people are quiet, and reading, unless it's of them low places for young thieves, and such like; and they've no money very likely, and I wouldn't like to trust them in a raffle if they had. In public-houses there's talk and fun, and people's more inclined for a raffle, or anything spicy that offers."

There are now regular street-sellers, or street-hawkers of these table-covers, in London, of whom are the men's wives, and they not unfrequently go a round together. Sometimes, on fine days, there are . I heard of woman who had been very successful in bartering table-covers for old clothes. "I've done a little that way myself," said a man in the trade, "but nothing to her, and people sees into things so now, that there's hardly a chance for a crust. The covers is so soft and shiny, and there's such fine parrots and birds of paradise on them, that before the price was known there was a chance of a good bargain. I once got for a cover that cost me a great coat that a Jew, after a hard bargaining, gave me for."

The prices of the table-covers (wholesale) run from a dozen to ; but the street-sellers rarely go to a higher price than They can buy a dozen, or half a dozen—or even a smaller quantity—of different sizes. Some of these streettraders sell, with the table-covers, a few washleathers, of the better kind. Calculating that street-sellers each take weekly the year round—-half being the profit, including their advantages in bartering and raffling—we find expended yearly upon japanned tablecovers, bought in the streets.