Shrimp selling, as I have stated, is of the trades to which the street-dealer often con fines himself throughout the year. The sale is about equally divided between the sexes, but the men do the most business, walking some of them to miles a day in a "round" of " miles there and back."

The shrimps vended in the streets are the Yarmouth prawn shrimps, sold at at from to a gallon, while the best shrimps (chiefly from Lee, in Essex,) vary in price from to a gallon; being a common price. The shrimps are usually mixed by the street-dealers, and they are cried, from stalls or on rounds, "a penny half-pint, fine fresh s'rimps." (I heard them called nothing but "s'rimps" by the street-dealers.) The half-pint, however, is in reality but half that quantity. "It's the same measure as it was years back," I was told, in a tone as if its antiquity removed all imputation of unfair dealing. Some young men "do well on s'rimps," sometimes taking in an hour on a Saturday evening, "when people get their money, and wants a relish." The females in the shrimp line are the wives, widows, or daughters of costermongers. They are computed to average a day profit in fine, and from to in bad weather; and, in snowy, or very severe weather, sometimes nothing at all.

shrimp--seller, a middle--aged woman, wrapped up in a hybrid sort of cloak, that was half a man's and half a woman's garment, gave me the following account. There was little vulgarity in either her language or manner.

I was in the s'rimp trade since I was a girl. I don't know how long. I don't know how old I am. I never knew; but I've two children, one's six and t'other's near eight, both girls; I've kept count of that as well as I can. My husband sells fish in the street; so did father, but he's dead. We buried him without the help of the parish, as many gets—that's something to say. I've known the trade every way. It never was any good in public-houses. They want such great ha'p'orths there. They'll put up with what isn't very fresh, to be sure, sometimes; and good enough for them too, I say, as spoils their taste with drink." [This was said very bitterly.] "If it wasn't for my husband's drinking for a day together now and then we'd do better. He's neither to have nor to hold when he's the worse for liquor; and it's the worse with him, for he's a quiet man when he's his own man. Perhaps I make 9d. a day, perhaps 1s. or more. Sometimes my husband takes my stand, and I go a round. Sometimes, if he gets through his fish, he goes my round. I give good measure, and my pint's the regular s'rimp pint." [It was the half-pint I have described.] "The trade's not so good as it was. People hasn't the money, they tells me so. It's bread before s'rimps, says they. I've heard them say it very cross, if I've wanted hard to sell. Some days I can sell nothing. My children stays with my sister, when me and my old man's out. They don't go to school, but Jane (the sister) learns them to sew. She makes drawers for the slopsellers, but has very little work, and gets very little for the little she does; she would learn them to read if she knew how. She's married to a pavior, that's away all day. It's a hard life mine, sir. The winter's a coming, and I'm now sometimes numbed with sitting at my stall in the cold. My feet feels like lumps of ice in the winter; and they're beginning now, as if they weren't my own. Standing's far harder work than going a round. I sell the best s'rimps. My customers is judges. If I've any s'rimps over on a night, as I often have one or two nights a week, I sells them for half-price to an Irishwoman, and she takes them to the beer-shops, and the coffee-shops. She washes them. to look fresh. I don't mind telling that, because people should buy of regular people. It's very few people know how to pick a s'rimp properly. You should take it by the head and the tail and jam them up, and then the shell separates, and the s'rimp comes out beautifully. That's the proper way.

Sometimes the sale on the rounds may be the same as that at the stalls, or or per cent. more or less, according to the weather, as shrimps can be sold by the itinerant dealers better than by the stall-keepers in wet weather, when people prefer buying at their doors. But in hot weather the stall trade is the best, "for people often fancy that the s'rimps is sent out to sell 'cause they'll not keep no longer. It's only among customers as knows you, you can do any good on a round then."

The costermongers sell annually, it appears, about pints of shrimps. At a pint (a very low calculation) the street sale of shrimps amount to upwards of yearly.