Another very characteristic phase of Baltimore life, and of southern life—­at least in many cities—­is that, instead of dealing with the baker, and the grocer, and the fish-market man around the corner, all Baltimore women go to the great market-sheds and do their own selecting under what amounts to one great roof.

The Lexington Market, to which my companion and I had the good fortune to be taken by a Baltimore lady, is comparable, in its picturesqueness with Les Halles of Paris, or the fascinating market in Seattle, where the Japanese pile up their fresh vegetables with such charming show of taste.  The great sheds cover three long blocks, and in the countless stall-like shops which they contain may be found everything for the table, including flowers to trim it and after-dinner sweets.  I doubt that any northern housewife knows such a market or such a profusion of comestibles.  In one stall may be purchased meat, in the next vegetables, in the next fish, in the next bread and cake, in the next butter and buttermilk, in the next fruit, or game, or flowers, or—­at Christmas time—­tree trimmings.  These stalls, with their contents, are duplicated over and over again; and if your fair guide be shopping for a dinner party, at which two men from out of town are to be initiated into the delights of the Baltimore cuisine, she may order up the costly and aristocratic Malacoclemmys, the diamond-back terrapin, sacred in Baltimore as is the Sacred Cod himself in Boston.

The admirable encyclopedia of Messrs. Funk & Wagnall’s informs me that “the diamond-back salt-water terrapin ... is caught in salt marshes along the coast from New England to Texas, the finest being those of the Massachusetts and the northern coasts.”  The italics are mine; and upon the italicized passage I expect the mayor and town council of Baltimore, or even the Government of the State of Maryland, to proceed against Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls, whose valuable volumes should forthwith be placed upon the State’s index expurgatorius.

Of a marketman I obtained the following lore concerning the tortoise of the terrapin species: 

In the Baltimore markets four kinds of terrapin are sold—­not counting muskrat, which is sometimes disguised with sauce and sherry and served as a substitute.  The cheapest and toughest terrapin is known as the “slider.”  Slightly superior to the “slider” is the “fat-back,” measuring, usually, about nine or ten inches in length, and costing, at retail, fifty cents to a dollar, according to season and demand.  Somewhat better than the “fat-back,” but of about the same size and cost, is the “golden-stripe” terrapin; but all these are the merest poor relations of the diamond-back.  Some diamond-back terrapin are supplied for the Baltimore market from North Carolina, but these, my marketman assured me, are inferior to those of Chesapeake Bay. (Everything in, or from, North Carolina seems to be inferior, according to the people of the other Southern States.)