THE seller of fruit in the streets confines his traffic far more closely to fruit, than does the vegetable-dealer to vegetables. Within these or years many street-traders sell only fruit the year through; but the purveyor of vegetables now usually sells fish with his cabbages, turnips, cauliflowers, or other garden stuff. The fish that he carries out on his round generally consists of soles, mackerel, or fresh or salt herrings. This combination of the streetgreen-grocer and street-fishmonger is called a general dealer."

The general dealers are usually accompanied by boys (as I have elsewhere shown), and sometimes by their wives. If a woman be a general dealer, she is mostly to be found at a stall or standing, and not "going a round."

The general dealer "works" everything through the season. He generally begins the year with sprats or plaice: then he deals in soles until the month of May. After this he takes to mackerel, haddocks, or red herrings. Next he trades in strawberries or raspberries. From these he will turn to green and ripe gooseberries; thence he will go to cherries; from cherries he will change to red or white currants; from them to plums or green-gages, and from them again to apples and pears, and damsons. After these he mostly "works" a few vegetables, and continues with them until the fish season begins again. Some general dealers occasionally trade in sweetmeats, but this is not usual, and is looked down upon by the "trade."

"I am a general dealer," said of the better class; "my missis is in the same line as myself, and sells everything that I do (barring green stuff.) She follows me always in what I sell. She has a stall, and sits at the corner of the street. I have got children. The eldest is , and goes out with me to call my goods for me. I have had inflammation in the lungs, and when I call my goods for a little while my voice leaves me. My missis is lame. She fell down a cellar, when a child, and injured her hip. Last October twelvemonth I was laid up with cold, which settled on my lungs, and laid me in my bed for a month. My missis kept me all that time. She was 'working' fresh herrings; and if it hadn't been for her we must all have gone into the workhouse. We are doing very badly now. I have no work to do. I have no stock-money to work with, and I object to pay a week for the loan of Once I gave a man a week for months for the loan of , and that nearly did me up. I

"Why, sir," said another vegetable-dealer, who was a robust-looking young man, very clean in his person, and dressed in costermonger corduroy, "I can hardly say what my business is worth to me, for I'm no scholard. I was brought up to the business by my mother. I've a middling connection, and perhaps clear a day, every fine day, or or a week; but out of that there's my donkey to keep, which I suppose costs a day, that's sixpences off. Wet or fine, she must be fed, in coorse. So must I; but I've only myself to keep at present, and I hire a lad when I want . I work my own trap. Then things is so uncertain. Why, now, look here, sir. Last Friday, I think it was— but that don't matter, for it often happens—fresh herrings was the in the morning, and at night, so many had come in. I buy at Billingsgate-market, and sometimes of a large shopkeeper, and at Covent-garden and the Borough. If I lay out in a nice lot of cabbages, I may sell them for , or if it isn't a lucky day with me for , or less. Sometimes people won't buy, as if the cholera was in the cabbages. Then turnips isn't such good sale yet, but they may be soon, for winter's best for them. There's more bilings then than there's roastings, I think. People like broth in cold weather. I buy turnips by the 'tally.' A tally's dozen bunches. There's no confinement of the number to a bunch; it's by their size; I've known , and I've known twice that. I sell parts of the turnips at a bunch, and the other part at If I get them at the tally I do well on turnips. I go the same rounds pretty regularly every day, or almost every day. I don't object to wet weather so much, because women don't like to stir out then, and so they'll buy of me as I pass. Carrots I do little in; they're dear, but they'll be cheaper in a month or . They always are. I don't work on Sundays. If I did, I'd get a jacketing. Our chaps would say: 'Well, you a scurf. have a round; give another man a Sunday chance.' A gentleman once said to me, when I was obligated to work on a Sunday: 'Why don't you leave it off, when you know it ain't right?' 'Well, sir,' said I, and he spoke very kind to me, 'well, sir, I'm working for my dinner, and if you'll give me or , I'll tumble to your notion and drop it, and I'll give you these here cowcumbers,' (I was working cowcumbers at that time) 'to do what you like with, and they cost me half-a-crown.' In potatoes I don't do a great deal, and it's no great trade. If I did, I should buy at the warehouses in , where they are sold in sacks of cwt.; lbs. and lbs., at and the cwt. I sell mine, tidy good, at , and a halfpenny a pound, but as I don't do much, not a bushel a day, I buy at market by the bushel at from to I never uses slangs. I sold times as many potatoes as I do now years back. I don't know why, 'cept it be that the rot set people again them, and their taste's gone another way. I sell a few more greens than I did, but not many. Spinach I don't do only a little in it. Celery I'm seldom able to get rid on. It's more women's work. Ing-uns the same."

I may add that I found the class, who confined their business principally to the sale of vegetables, the dullest of all the costermongers. Any man may labour to make of cabbages or turnips, which cost him , when the calculation as to the relative proportion of measures, &c. is beyond his comprehension.

Pursuing the same mode of calculation as has been heretofore adopted, we find that the absolute quantity of vegetables sold in the London streets by the costers is as follows: