There are seven millions of people in London. That does not give any idea of the real number, but if you were to begin now and count hard for three days and nights, you would not have counted a million then, even if you never stopped to eat or to sleep. Just think of it, that great crowd of people all wanting to be fed, and many of them wanting three good meals every day! If all the carts in the world were to be marching into London the whole time, you would think they could hardly bring food enough for this multitude of people. Yet somehow it is done, and it does not seem to be very difficult either. I think I hear someone saying, 'But there are the shops; people can go and buy there.' Yes, they can, of course, but where do the shopmen get their stuff from? Where does all the meat come from, and the fruit and the flowers and vegetables, and all the things that must be kept fresh? Where does the shopman buy them? The shopman gets them from the markets, and the markets get them from the country. There are many great markets, and to-day we will visit three of them—that where we can see the meat, and that where the flowers and vegetables are, and that where the fish are. The flower market is much the nicest, of course, so we will keep it for the last.

The fish market is down close by the river, just where you would expect it to be. If you want to see it you must not mind getting up very early, long before any cabs or omnibuses are about—in fact, it will be very difficult to get there at all unless you can bicycle or can walk a long way without being tired.

Early one Saturday morning, then, when the light is still dim, and we have the streets all to ourselves, we start. It is so quiet. Not even the milkman is about yet, and the blinds of the houses are all down. The whole of the inhabitants of London seem asleep except you and me. We go right down into the City by London Bridge, and then in a very narrow dark street we suddenly find a number of people and hear a great noise. All over the street there are barrows and carts, and people are shouting and pushing, and everyone is trying to get in and out of the market at once. The market, which is called Billingsgate, is a great big place like a barn, and when once we have pushed in among all the rough men and women there, we see a wonderful sight. You would think you were at the seaside from the smell, for there are great lumps of seaweed lying about among the fish on the slabs, and they bring the breath of the sea with them. Here is a crawling pile of black lobsters; they are alive, and they turn bright-red when they have been boiled. Poor lobsters! they can't think where they have got to, and they are stretching out their long whiskers and looking about with their great goggle eyes, and the man who wants to sell them is shouting, 'Come, buy! come, buy! fine fresh lobsters alive, alive, oh!' All the fishmongers in London must be here, you would think, there are so many; and they buy the fish in great quantities, not as we do in the shops by the weight, but by the number—so much for each fish, whether it is big or little. And then they sell them for more money than they gave for them to the people who want them for breakfast and dinner, and so they make their living. Salmon, the king of all the fish, is always sold by weight, though, even in this market. Look at the salmon—huge silver fish lying on the stalls, with their scales gleaming in the early light. When they are cut open their flesh is pink, and all the other fish have white flesh. King Salmon was taking a little exercise one day, dashing about in the salt sea or sailing up the river, perhaps, when he ran his great stupid head into a net, and the more he struggled the worse it was, and strong as he was—as strong as a fairly big dog—he could not break that net, and so he was hauled out and brought to shore, where he died. Or perhaps he saw something very attractive in the water, and made a rush at it, only to find a cruel hook firmly fixed in his mouth. He might dash away or lie quiet, but wherever he was he knew the hook was still there; and when he was tired with all his struggles, the fisherman at the other end of the line began to haul it in gradually, and poor old salmon was drawn nearer and nearer to the land, and at last picked out of the water with a landing-net. And now he lies at Billingsgate, waiting for someone to buy him and take him to a shop to sell him again to be eaten. All round there are many cries—indeed, a noise such as you never heard before. What you hear is something like this: 'Haddock and cod, come buy! Fine fresh fish, fresh cod, buy, buy! Here you are; couldn't buy any finer. All this lot for ten shillings! Look here! look here! Whiting and turbot! crabs crawling all alive, alive, oh! Shrimps do you want? Fine shrimps, the very best! Here you are, buy! buy!' and so on, everyone shouting out to make the fishmongers buy their fish. Perhaps a crab crawls too near the edge of his stall, and falls over with a crash, and the man who owns him picks him up and throws him back, and off jumps Master Crab again as quick as you please, and does just the same thing again. You would think he would not want to tumble down: it must hurt him, even through such a thick shell; but he thinks if he goes on long enough perhaps he'll find again those lovely rocks all soaked with the great sea tide, which somehow he seems to have lost. So he goes on scuttling about and tumbling down until someone picks him up and throws him into a bag with the rest, and he is carried off to the shop, where, poor crab! he will never have a chance of finding his dear rocks again or hearing the water rushing in over the seaweed.

He was perhaps lying under a great mass of seaweed in a deep pool, when a pole came walking along and poked into his side. He did not want it at all—in fact, he got quite angry with it, and shook himself free; but that pole only waggled about, and stuck into him again, and at last he seized it with his claws, and the more it shook, the tighter he held on, and he did not know that that was just what the man who was bending over the pool wanted. So the pole was pulled out with Master Crab sticking to it, and the man caught hold of him so neatly that he had not time to use his claws, and popped him into a bag, and he has never found the seaside since, and now he never will again. But perhaps he would not mind so much if he knew that Mrs. Crab did not miss him at all, for she went out to seek him when he did not come home, and she smelt a piece of dead fish, just the very thing she liked most of all. So she crawled up the side of the funny basket that was lying in the water, and found that the bit of dead fish was inside it. But that did not matter, for there was a hole at the top; so in popped Mrs. Crab, and there she had to stay, for she could not get out again. She tried and tried, but the hole was made with bits of stick pointed inwards, so that she could not get up to it from the inside. Many lobsters have been caught that way, and now Mrs. Crab was too; and when the men came in the evening to look at their baskets, they were quite pleased, for they found not only Mrs. Crab, but four of her friends whom she had invited inside because she felt lonely. So Mrs. Crab went to the market too, but it was not to the same market as her husband, and she did not meet him again. All those shrimps lying near were caught by boys with nets. The boys ran into the water with bare feet, and thrust their nets along the sandy bottom, and each time they came out they picked out the shrimps from the net and threw them into a pail, and only the very strongest managed to hop back on to the sand again; nearly all of them went to market.

But while we have been looking at these things the market has been getting emptier; and now there are only a few young lads left, who have little barrows and carts, and are called costers, and they are walking round the stalls and picking out what they will buy after the fishmongers have got all the best of the fish. It is time to go away, and soon Billingsgate will be nearly desolate. It is not a nice place, and if there were not some policemen near I should not like to have brought you here.

We cannot go to Covent Garden Market where the flowers are this morning, for it is nearly seven o'clock, and too late, as we ought to be there very early; but we can go to the meat market, which is not at all a pretty sight, and a long way off. But it is very wonderful. Here there is selling going on quite late, until about ten o'clock, perhaps, and even to the middle of the day the place is still busy. It is a huge place with a great glass roof, and there are rows of stalls with narrow passages like streets between them, and everywhere are great masses of raw meat. It is a city of meat; you walk down lanes of meat—meat everywhere. All the butchers in London come here to choose what they will buy, and from midnight onward all is bustle and business. Some of the meat comes to the market in vans, but the greater part comes by train. Right under the market there is a place scooped out in the earth like a cellar, and the railway lines run in under there, and then from the vans standing on the lines it is easy to lift the meat up into the market. Outside there is a great square, and in the early morning this square is filled with carts of every kind waiting to carry away the meat which the butchers buy. But all the meat does not come from England. A great deal of it comes from over the sea, from Australia and New Zealand, for England herself would never have enough to feed all her people. Close to the market at Smithfield there is another, where nothing but poultry is sold. Rows and rows of dead chickens go every day to fill all the shops—good chickens and bad chickens, the chickens that obeyed their mothers and the chickens that didn't; they come here just the same to supply the wants of the people of London.

The flower market is very pretty, and it is a treat to go there. If you were grown up and had been to a ball in London, you might see, when you were coming back in the early morning, a cart piled high with cabbages, and a sleepy-looking man sitting on the shafts, while a dim lantern hung beside him. This is one of the carts bringing in the vegetables that London wants for her dinner next day. London itself is like a great ogre—eating, always eating. You remember the story of the giant who used to be quiet so long as the people brought him enough to eat? And how all the people in the country used to work day and night to bring in cartloads of things, for fear if they allowed him to go hungry he would eat them instead? The giant could swallow up those cartloads as if they were spoonfuls. And so it is with London. Men work day and night bringing, always bringing, cartloads of meat and fruit and vegetables, and London swallows them all up; and next day there are more carts and more food from the country, and so it goes on always.

In the middle of the night, when most people are fast asleep, the man who wants to sell his flowers or vegetables at Covent Garden Market must be up and out. In the dim light he harnesses his horse and lights his lamp. Perhaps his faithful dog watches him, and runs about quite pleased to be going for a walk, even if it is in the middle of the night. Then the man starts off on his long, slow journey into London. Mile after mile over muddy or dusty roads, through villages where everyone is asleep, where not even a dog barks, on and on to London. It may be very cold, and the horse only goes slowly, so it cannot be very comfortable; but this is the man's work, and he must do it. Perhaps the cartman has a little boy, and takes him too, and you see the little boy, when the cart is coming back empty in the morning, lying sound asleep on the straw dead tired, while his father drives home.

All the carts gather up to the market, and then they are unloaded. One brings vegetables, and another fruit, and another flowers, and by two o'clock everything is in its place and ready to be sold. Then the buyers come—shop people again, greengrocers and fruiterers—and they look round and try to get the best they can at the lowest prices.

There is a great hall covered in with glass, and in this the flowers are arranged. It is lovely—like a huge flower-show. Of course, the flowers are different at different times of the year, but in the early summer you can see banks and banks of roses, all colours—red and yellow and white—and masses of sweet-scented carnations and lilies and heliotrope; and the smell is very sweet, so different from the market at Billingsgate. All the people here, except you and me, are busy people come to buy in order to sell again, and some of them don't look very rich. Do you see that girl there in the corner with a red shawl and a hat with huge untidy feathers all out of curl? She is a flower-girl, and she is going to spend two or three shillings on buying a basket of flowers. These she will do up into little bunches, and if she is lucky enough to sell them again she will make a few shillings before the evening. When she has chosen her flowers she goes away and sits down on a cold stone step, and begins pulling them about and blowing into the roses to make them open, and if you feel as I do you will not care to buy them then; you would much rather she left them just as they were and did not finger them. But she thinks people will be more likely to buy them if they are carefully arranged. When she has done she starts off to walk a long way to a stand where she goes every day, perhaps a place where two or three streets join and there is an open space. There is one in the West End, where there is an island of pavement between lines of traffic north and south, east and west; the flower-girls sit here all day. They don't seem to mind the rain or wet at all; they are quite used to it. They don't pay anything for being here; but they are very angry if another comes and takes their place, and the girl or woman to whom it belongs will perhaps fight the newcomer, and then the policeman has to come and separate them.

Some of these places where the flower-women sit are made quite beautiful by the baskets of flowers. In the spring, when the daffodils are out, it looks as if a patch of sunshine had fallen from the sky into the dark street. But all these flowers don't come from England. A great many are grown abroad, and sent to Covent Garden Market from over the sea.

At the market, when the cartman has finished arranging his vegetables, he goes to a coffee-stall. There are many there, and perhaps he gets a great cup of strong coffee and an immense hunch of bread or cake for breakfast, or perhaps he goes to the public-house at the corner; but at any rate, before he goes back, he has something to eat, and then he piles up his baskets, now empty, in which he brought the things and starts off home. One of the most surprising things at Covent Garden is the quantities of oranges that come there—boxes and boxes of oranges. These have been brought to England up the river in ships, and the men, with great cushions on their heads, carry them to the markets. The cushion is to make it soft and prevent the hard wood of the box hurting their heads, and they carry a huge boxful in this way more easily than you or I would carry a book.

Long years ago, when London consisted of only a few houses and Westminster of another few houses, this market, which is now in the middle of streets, was really a garden, and it belonged to a convent for nuns, and it is strange that it should be like a garden still with all its fruit and flowers, though now it is part of a great town.