THE sale of glass and china cement is an old trade in the streets, but which becomes less and less followed. Before the finer articles of crockeryware became cheap as they are now, it was of importance to mend, if possible, a broken dish of better quality, and of more importance to mend a china punch-bowl. Dishes, however, are now much cheaper, and china punch-bowls are no longer an indispensable part of even tavern festivity.

The sellers of this cement proclaim it as which will "cure any china, stone, or earthenware, and make the broken parts adhere so firmly, that if you let it fall again, it will break, not at the part where it has been cemented, but at some other. Only a halfpenny, or a penny a stick." These traders sometimes illustrate the adhesive strength of the composition by producing a plate or dish which has been cemented in different places, and letting it fall, to break in some hitherto sound part. This they usually succeed in doing. For the cementing of glass the street article is now perhaps never sold, and was but scantily sold, I am informed, at any time, as the junction was always unsightly.

There are now men who sell this cement in the streets, usually to be found in , , being, perhaps, the who carries on the trade most regularly. They all make their own cement; of the receipts being— lb. shellac (), lb. brimstone (), blended together until it forms a thick sort of glue. This quantity makes half-a-crown's-worth of the cement for the purposes of retail. The sellers do not confine themselves to locality, but are usually to be found in or other of the street-markets on a Saturday night. If each seller take weekly (of which may be profit), we find expended yearly by street customers in this cement.

I include razor paste under this head, as sometimes, and at time more frequently than now,

There are street-sellers of razor-paste, but they seem to prefer "working" the distant suburbs, or going on country rounds, as there are often only in London. It is still vended, I am told, to clerks, who use it to sharpen their pen-knives, but the paste, owing to the prevalence of the use of steel pens, is now almost a superfluity, compared to what it was. It is bought also, and frequently enough in publichouses, by working men, as a means of "setting" their razors. The vendors make the paste themselves, except , who purchase of a streetseller. The ingredients are generally fuller's earth (), hog's lard (), and emery powder (). The paste is sold in boxes carried on a tray, which will close and form a sort of case, like a backgammon board. The quantity I have given will make a dozen boxes (each sold at ), so that the profit is in the , for to the paid for ingredients must be added , for the cost of a dozen boxes. The paste is announced as "warranted to put an edge to a razor or penknife superior to anything ever before offered to the public." The street-sellers offer to prove this by sharpening any gentleman's pen-knife on the paste spread on a piece of soldier's old belt, which sharpening, when required, they accomplish readily enough. of these paste-sellers, I was told, had been apprenticed to a barber; another had been a cutler, the remainder are of the ordinary class of street-sellers.

Calculating that men "work" the metropolis daily, taking each per day (with profit), we find the amount of the street outlay.