300 MUSCIDiE — FLIES. 



was a very little fellow when I first went out with them, but 

 I could sell theni pretty well then, sometimes three or four 

 dozen a day. I've got one place, in a stable, where I can 

 sell a dozen at a time to country people. 



" I calls out in the streets, and I goes into the shops, too, 

 and calls out, 'Ketch 'em alive, ketch 'em alive; ketch all 

 the nasty black-beetles, blue-bottles, and flies ; ketch 'em 

 from teasing the baby's eyes.' That's what most of us boys 

 cries out. Some boys who is stupid only says, 'Ketch 'em 

 alive,' but people don't buy so well from them. 



"Up in St. Giles's there is a lot of fly-boys, but they're a 

 bad set, and will fling mud at gentlemen, and some prigs the 

 gentlemen's pockets. Sometimes, if I sell more than a big 

 boy, he'll get mad and hit me. He'll tell me to give him a 

 halfpenny and he won't touch me, and that if I don't he'll 

 kill me. Some of the boys takes an open fly-paper, and 

 makes me look another way, and then they sticks the ketch- 

 'em-alive on my face. The stuff won't come off without soap 

 and hot water, and it goes black, and looks like mud. One 

 day a boy had a broken fly-paper, and I was taking a drink 

 of water, and he come behind me and slapped it up in my face. 

 A gentleman as saw him give him a crack with a stick and 

 me twopence. It takes your breath away, until a man comes 

 and takes it off. It all sticked to my hair, and I couldn't 

 rack (comb) right for some time .... 



"I don't like going along with other boys, they take your 

 customers away ; for perhaps they'll sell 'em at three a penny 

 to 'em, and spoil the customers for you. I won't go with 

 the big boy you saw, 'cos he's such a blackgeyard ; when 

 he's in the country he'll go up to a lady and say, 'Want a 

 fly-paper, marm?' and if she says 'No,' he'll perhaps job 

 his head in her face — butt at her like. 



" When there's no flies, and the ketch-'em-alive is out, 

 then I goes tumbling. I can turn a cat'enwheel over on 

 one hand. I'm going to-morrow to the ci^untry, harvesting 

 and hopping — for, as we says, ' Go out hopping, come in jump- 

 ing.' We start at three o'clock to-morrow, and we shall 

 get about twelve o'clock at night at Dead Man's Barn. It 

 was left for poor people to sleep in, and a man was buried 

 there in a corner. The man had got six farms of hops ; and 

 if his son hadn't buried him there, he wouldn't have had 

 none of the riches. 



"The greatest number of fly-papers I've sold in a day is 



