OF the boys and girls who are sent out to sell in the streets by parents who are themselves streettraders, I need say but little under this head. I have spoken of them, and given some of their statements in other divisions of this work (see the accounts of the coster boys and girls). When, as is the case with many of the costermongers, and with the Irish fruit-sellers, the parents and children follow the same calling, they form household, and work, as it were, "into another's hands." The father can buy a larger, and consequently a cheaper quantity, when he can avail himself of a subdivision of labour as inexpensive as that of his own family—whom he must maintain whether employed or unemployed—in order to vend such extra quantity. I have already noticed that in some families (as is common with rude tribes) costermongering seems an hereditary pursuit, and the frequent and constant employment of children in street traffic is reason why this hereditary pursuit is perpetuated, for street commerce is thus at a very early age made part and parcel of the young coster's existence, and he very probably acquires a distaste for any other occupation, which may entail more of and It is very rarely that a costermonger apprentices his son to any handicraft business, although a daughter may sometimes be placed in domestic service. The child is usually "sent out to sell."

There is another class of children who are "sent out" as are the children of the costers, and sometimes with the same cheap and readily attained articles—oranges and lemons, nuts, chestnuts, onions, salt (or fresh) herrings, winks, or shrimps, and, more rarely, with water-cresses or cut-flowers. Sometimes the young vendors offer small wares— leather boot-laces, coat-studs, steel pens, or such like. These are often the children, not of street sales-people, but of persons in a measure connected with a street life, or some open-air pursuit; the children of cabmen deprived of their licences, or of the hangers--on of cabmen; of the "supers" (supernumeraries) of the theatres who have irregular or no employment, or, as they would call it, "engagement," with the unhappy consequence of irregular or no "salary:" the children, again, of street performers, or Ethiopians, or street-musicians, are "sent out to sell," as well as those of the poorer class of labourers connected with the river —ballast-heavers, lumpers, &c.; of (Irish) bricklayers' labourers and paviours' assistants; of market-porters and dock-labourers; of coal-heavers out of work, and of the helpers at coal-wharfs, and at the other wharfs; of the "roughs;" and of the many classes of the labouring, rather than the artisan poor, whose earnings are uncertain, or insufficient, or have failed them altogether.

With such classes as these (and more especially with the Irish), as soon as Pat or Biddy is big enough to carry a basket, and is of sufficiently ripened intellect to understand the relative value of coins, from a farthing to a shilling, he or she do something "to help," and that something is generally to sell in the streets. poor woman who made a scanty living in working on corn sacks and bags—her infirmities sometimes preventing her working at all—sent out children, together

From little girl I had the following account. She was then selling boot-laces and offered them most perseveringly. She was turned , she said, and had sold things in the streets for years past, but not regularly. The father got his living in the streets by "playing;" she seemed reluctant to talk about his avocation, but I found that he was sometimes a street-musician, or streetperformer, and sometimes sung or recited in public houses, and having "seen better days," had it appears communicated some feeling of dislike for his present pursuits to his daughter, so that I discontinued any allusion to the subject. The mother earned or weekly, in shoe-binding, when she had employment, which was weeks out of , and a son of earned what was sufficient to maintain him as an (occasional) assistant in a wholesale pottery, or rather potshop.

It's in the winter, sir, when things are far worst with us. Father can make very little then —but I don't know what he earns exactly at any time—and though mother has more work then, there's fire and candle to pay for. We were very badly off last winter, and worse, I think, the winter before. Father sometimes came home and had made nothing, and if mother had no work in hand we went to bed to save fire and candle, if it was ever so soon. Father would die afore he would let mother take as much as a loaf from the parish. I was sent out to sell nuts first: 'If it's only 1d. you make,' mother said, 'it's a good piece of bread.' I didn't mind being sent out. I knew children that sold things in the streets. Perhaps I liked it better than staying at home without a fire and with nothing to do, and if I went out I saw other children busy. No, I wasn't a bit frightened when I first started, not a bit. Some children—but they was such little things—said: 'O, Liz, I wish I was you.' I had twelve ha'porths and sold them all. I don't know what it made; 2d. most likely. I didn't crack a single nut myself. I was fond of them then, but I don't care for them now. I could do better if I went into public-houses, but I'm only let go to Mr. Smith's, because he knows father, and Mrs. Smith and him recommends me and wouldn't let anybody mislest me. Nobody ever offered to. I hear people swear there sometimes, but it's not at me. I sell nuts to children in the streets, and laces to young women. I have sold nuts and oranges to soldiers. They never say anything rude to me, never. I was once in a great crowd, and was getting crushed, and there was a very tall soldier close by me, and he lifted me, basket and all, right up to his shoulder, and carried me clean out of the crowd. He had stripes on his arm. 'I shouldn't like you to be in such a trade,' says he, 'if you was my child.' He didn't say why he wouldn't like it. Perhaps because it was beginning to rain. Yes, we are far better off now. Father makes money. I don't go out in bad weather in the summer; in the winter, though, I must. I don't know what I make. I don't know what I shall be when I grow up. I can read a little. I've been to church five or six times in my life. I should go oftener and so would mother, if we had clothes.

I have no reason to suppose that in this case the father was an intemperate man, though some of the parents who thus send their children out intemperate, and, loving to indulge in the idleness to which intemperance inclines them, are forced to live on the labour of their wives and children.