walking may chance to be. As to stopping to shake hands, or to
take the friend's arm, they seem to think that as it is not
included in their salary, they have no right to do it. Small
office lads in large hats, who are made men before they are boys,
hurry along in pairs, with their first coat carefully brushed, and
the white trousers of last Sunday plentifully besmeared with dust
and ink. It evidently requires a considerable mental struggle to
avoid investing part of the day's dinner-money in the purchase of
the stale tarts so temptingly exposed in dusty tins at the pastry-
cooks' doors; but a consciousness of their own importance and the
receipt of seven shillings a-week, with the prospect of an early
rise to eight, comes to their aid, and they accordingly put their
hats a little more on one side, and look under the bonnets of all
the milliners' and stay-makers' apprentices they meet--poor girls!-
-the hardest worked, the worst paid, and too often, the worst used
class of the community.

Eleven o'clock, and a new set of people fill the streets. The
goods in the shop-windows are invitingly arranged; the shopmen in
their white neckerchiefs and spruce coats, look as it they couldn't
clean a window if their lives depended on it; the carts have
disappeared from Covent-garden; the waggoners have returned, and
the costermongers repaired to their ordinary 'beats' in the
suburbs; clerks are at their offices, and gigs, cabs, omnibuses,
and saddle-horses, are conveying their masters to the same
destination. The streets are thronged with a vast concourse of
people, gay and shabby, rich and poor, idle and industrious; and we
come to the heat, bustle, and activity of NOON.