help themselves with unladylike greediness to the potato pie. It
must need careful housewifery to keep these poor creatures on two
francs a day and make a profit for yourself. So "Madame," the much-
grumbled-at, who has gone to bed about twelve, rises a little before
five, makes her way down with her basket. Thus a few sous may be
saved upon the day's economies.

Sometimes it is a mere child who is the little housekeeper. One
thinks that perhaps this early training in the art of haggling may
not be good for her. Already there is a hard expression in the
childish eyes, mean lines about the little mouth. The finer
qualities of humanity are expensive luxuries, not to be afforded by
the poor.

They overwork their patient dogs, and underfeed them. During the two
hours' market the poor beasts, still fastened to their little
"chariots," rest in the open space about the neighbouring Bourse.
They snatch at what you throw them; they do not even thank you with a
wag of the tail. Gratitude! Politeness! What mean you? We have
not heard of such. We only work. Some of them amid all the din lie
sleeping between their shafts. Some are licking one another's sores.
One would they were better treated; alas! their owners, likewise, are
overworked and underfed, housed in kennels no better. But if the
majority in every society were not overworked and underfed and meanly
housed, why, then the minority could not be underworked and overfed
and housed luxuriously. But this is talk to which no respectable
reader can be expected to listen.

They are one babel of bargaining, these markets. The purchaser
selects a cauliflower. Fortunately, cauliflowers have no feelings,