he must buy of an old clothes’-dealer a half-worn coat which has seen its best days, and lasts but a few weeks.  Moreover, the working-man’s clothing is, in most cases, in bad condition, and there is the oft-recurring necessity for placing the best pieces in the pawnbroker’s shop.  But among very large numbers, especially among the Irish, the prevailing clothing consists of perfect rags often beyond all mending, or so patched that the original colour can no longer be detected.  Yet the English and Anglo-Irish go on patching, and have carried this art to a remarkable pitch, putting wool or bagging on fustian, or the reverse—­it’s all the same to them.  But the true, transplanted Irish hardly ever patch except in the extremest necessity, when the garment would otherwise fall apart.  Ordinarily the rags of the shirt protrude through the rents in the coat or trousers.  They wear, as Thomas Carlyle says,—­{67}

   “A suit of tatters, the getting on or off which is said to be a
   difficult operation, transacted only in festivals and the high tides
   of the calendar.”

The Irish have introduced, too, the custom previously unknown in England, of going barefoot.  In every manufacturing town there is now to be seen a multitude of people, especially women and children, going about barefoot, and their example is gradually being adopted by the poorer English.

As with clothing, so with food.  The workers get what is too bad for the property-holding class.  In the great towns of England everything may be had of the best, but it costs money; and the workman, who must keep house on a couple of pence, cannot afford much expense.  Moreover, he usually receives his wages on Saturday evening, for, although a beginning has been made in the payment of wages on Friday, this excellent arrangement is by no means universal; and so he comes to market at five or even seven o’clock, while the buyers of the middle-class have had the first choice during the morning, when the market teems with the best of everything.  But when the workers reach it, the best has vanished, and, if it was still there, they would probably not be able to buy it.  The potatoes which the workers buy are usually poor, the vegetables wilted, the cheese old and of poor quality, the bacon rancid, the meat lean, tough, taken from old, often diseased, cattle, or such as have died a natural death, and not fresh even then, often half decayed.  The sellers are usually small hucksters who buy up inferior goods, and can sell them cheaply by reason of their badness.  The poorest workers are forced to use still another device to get together the things they need with their few pence.  As nothing can be sold on Sunday, and all shops must be closed at twelve o’clock on Saturday night, such things as would not keep until Monday are sold at any price between ten o’clock and midnight.  But nine-tenths of what is sold at ten o’clock is past using by Sunday morning, yet these are precisely