THESE traders are a distinct class from the stick-sellers, and have a distinct class of customers. The sale is considerable; for to many the possession of a whip is a matter of importance. If be lost or stolen, for instance, from a butcher's cart at Newgate-market, the need of a whip to proceed with the cart and horse to its destination, prompts the purchase in the quickest manner, and this is usually effected of the street-seller who offers his wares to the carters at every established resort.

The commonest of the whips sold to cart-drivers is sometimes represented as whalebone covered with gut; but the whalebone is a stick, and the flexible part is a piece of leather, while the gut is a sort of canvas, made to resemble the worked gut of the better sort of whips, and is pasted to the stock; the thong—which in the common sort is called "-strands," or plaits—being attached to the flexible part. Some of these whips are old stocks recovered, and many are sad rubbish; but for any deceit the street-seller can hardly be considered responsible, as he always purchases at the shop of a wholesale whipmaker, who is in some cases a retailer at the same price and under the same representations as the street-seller. The retail price is each; the wholesale, and a dozen. Some of the street whip-sellers represent themselves as the makers, but the whips are almost all made in Birmingham and Walsall.

Of these traders very few are the ordinary street-sellers. Most of them have been in some

I often thought I'd be forced to go back home, sir," he said, "and I'd have been ashamed to do't, for I would come to try my luck in London, and would leave a place I had. All my friends—and they're not badly off—tried to 'suade me to stop at home another year or two, but come I would, as if I must and couldn't help it. I brought good clothes with me, and they're a'most all gone; and I'd be ashamed to go back so shabby, like the prodigal's son; you know, sir. I'll have another try yet, for I get on to a cab next Monday, with a very respectable cab-master. As I've only myself, I know I can do. I was on one, but not with the same master, after I'd been six weeks here; but in two days I was forced to give it up, for I didn't know my way enough, and I didn't know the distances, and couldn't make the money I paid for my cab. If I asked another cabman, he was as likely to tell me wrong as right. Then the fares used to be shouting out, 'I say, cabby, where the h——are you going? I told you Mark-lane, and here we are at the Minories. Drive back, sir.' I know my way now well enough, sir. I've walked the streets too long not to know it. I notice them on purpose now, and know the distances. I've written home for a few things for my new trade, and I'm sure to get them. They don't know I'm selling whips. There would be such a laugh against me among all t'young fellows if they did. Me as was so sure to do well in London!

It's a poor trade. A carman 'll bid me 6d. for such a whip as this, which is 4s. 3d. the half dozen wholesale. 'I have to find my own whips,' my last customer said, 'though I drives for a stunning grocer, and be d——d to him.' They're great swearers some of them. I make 7s. or 8s. in a week, for I can walk all day without tiring. I one week cleared 14s. Next week I made 3s. I have slept in cheap lodging-houses—but only in three: one was very decent, though out of the way; one was middling; and the t'other was a pig-sty. I've seen very poor places in the country, but nothing to it. I now pay 2s. a week for a sort of closet, with a bed in it, at the top of a house, but it's clean and sweet; and my landlord's a greengrocer and coal-merchant and firewood-seller;—he's a good man—and I can always earn a little against the rent with him, by cleaning his harness, and grooming his pony—he calls it a pony, but it's over 15 hands—and greasing his cart-wheels, and mucking out his stable, and such like. I shall live there when I'm on my cab.

Other carmen's whips are , and as high as , but the great sale is of those at The principal localities for the trade are at the meat-markets, the "green markets," , the streets leading to when crowded in the morning, the neighbourhood of the docks and wharfs, and the thoroughfares generally.

The trade in the other kind of whips is again in the hands of another class, in that of cabmen who have lost their licence, who have been maimed, and the numerous "hands" who job about stables—especially cab-horse stables—when without other employment. The price of the inferior sort of "gig-whips" is to , the wholesale price being from to the dozen. Some are lower than , but the cabmen, I am told, "will hardly look at them; they know what they're a-buying of, and is wide awake, and that's reason why the profit's so small." Occasionally, whip-seller told me, he had sold gig-whips at or to gentlemen who had broken their "valuable lance-wood," or "beautiful thorn," and who made a temporary purchase until they could buy at their accustomed shops. "A military gent, with mustachers, once called to me in ," the same man stated, "and he said, 'Here, give me the best you can for half-a-crown, I've snapped my own. I never use the whip when I drive, for my horse is skittish and won't stand it, but I can't drive without .'"

In the height of the season, , and sometimes men, sell handsome gig-whips at the fashionable drives or the approaches. "I have taken as much as in a day, for whips," said man, "each ; but they were silvermounted thorn, and very cheap indeed; that's or years back; people looks oftener at now. I've sold horse-dealers' whips too, with loaded ends. Oh, all prices. I've bought them, wholesale, at a dozen, and a piece. Hunting whips are never sold in the streets now. I have sold them, but it's a good while ago, as riding whips for park gentlemen. The stocks were of fine strong lancewood—such a close grain! with buck horn handles, and a close-worked thong, fastened to the stock by an 'eye' (loop), which it's slipped through. You could hear its crack half a mile off. 'Threshing machines,' I called them."

All the whip-sellers in a large way visit the races, fairs, and large markets within miles of London. Some go as far as Goodwood at the race-time, which is between and miles distant. On a well-thronged race-ground these men will take or in a day, and from a half to -fourths as much at a country fair. They sell riding-whips in the country, but seldom in town.

An experienced man knew whip-sellers, as nearly as he could call them to mind, by sight, and by name. He was certain that on no day

Some of the whip-sellers vend whipcord, also, to those cabmen and carters who "cord" their own whips. The whipcord is bought wholesale at the pound (sometimes lower), and sold at the knot, there being generally dozen knots in a pound.

Another class "mend" cabmen's whips, rethonging, or "new-springing" them, but these are street-artisans.