perate poverty, led thither by children,
who have clamored at my side for alms, and found such misery as I am
incompetent to express in words. I have seen the living unable to rise
from sickness, in the same bed with the dying and the dead. I have known
an instance where a living man in strong health, bating the exhausting
effects of privation and sorrow, has been compelled to seek repose in
the straw beside the body of his dead wife, his children occupying the
floor, and there being in the room neither chair in which he could seat
himself, nor table on which he could stretch himself for rest. I have
seen an infant crawl for nourishment to its dead mother's breast, and
there was not in all the house the value of a cent to buy it food. I
have seen a wife, in following her husband's body to the grave, drop in
the road and die before medical assistance could be procured. A
_post-mortem_ examination proved that she died from hunger.

Let no one say that there are charitable asylums enough in London to
furnish assistance in all deserving cases of extreme distress. If there
are, their doors--and I appeal to all Englishmen who know any thing
about the workings of the Poor Law System in their country, whether I do
not record the truth--are closed in three cases out of five against the
applicant. Besides, charity in London is reserved and suspicious. But
its reserve is chilling to the deserving poor, who are usually too proud
to disclose their sufferings to strangers, and are ashamed to solicit
alms with an open hand. They strive as long as they are able; their
history, if duly recorded, would swell the roll of martyrs. I have known
among them heroes and heroines, as in all nations such, whether apparent
to the world or not, are never wanting. Wives, who have been bred in
comfort, working for their husbands who were out of employment, and
supporting them by the scanty wages of such industry as many men would
shrink from. Girls of tender years toiling to support a surviving
parent, sisters toiling for their brothers. And all done not only
without a murmur, but with cheerfulness and thankfulness to God that
their condition was no worse. I have heard hopeful accents from the
plodding charwoman, that have made me ashamed, as Wordsworth stood
rebuked before the 'leech-gatherer, upon the lonely moor.' Let England
look to it. These women, mothers of men, are abandoning her shores for
foreign lands. When good and dutiful children desert