Various and singular are the expedients practised by numbers in the British capital.

Among these the class of Mud-larks is not the least extraordinary, that is people, who, on the ebb of the tide re-pair to the river-side, in quest of any article that the water may have left behind in the mud.

To this description of people belonged Peggy Jones, the well known Mud-lark at Black Friars.

She was a woman, apparently about forty years of age, with red hair; the particular object of whose researches was the coals which accidentally fell from the sides of the lighters.

Her constant resort was the neighbourhood of Blackfriars, where she was always to be seen, even before the tide was down, wading into the water, nearly up to the middle, and scraping together from the bottom, the coals which she felt with her feet.