d to princesses, has assured me that
her journeys by railway have sometimes been rendered miserable by
the thought that she had not even a few pence to spare for the
porter who would presently shoulder her little box on to the roof
of her cab.

It is people of this class, much more than those beneath them, who are
shut out from all amusements. The mechanic goes to the play and to the
music-hall, and occasionally takes his 'old girl,' as he calls his wife,
and even 'a kid' or two, to the Crystal Palace. But those I have in my
mind have no such relaxation from compulsory duty and importunate care.
'I know it's very foolish, but I feel it sometimes to be a pinch,' says
one of these ill-fated ones, 'to see them all [the daughters of her
employer] going to the play, or the opera, while I am expected to be
satisfied with a private view of their pretty dresses.' No doubt it is
the sense of comparison (especially with the female) that sharpens the
sting of poverty. It is not, however, through envy that the 'prosperity
of fools destroys us,' so much as the knowledge of its unnecessariness
and waste. When a mother has a sick child who needs sea air, which she
cannot afford to give it, the consciousness that her neighbour's family
(the head of which perhaps is a most successful financier and
market-rigger) are going to the Isle of Wight for three months, though
there is nothing at all the matter with them, is an added bitterness.
How often it is said (no doubt with some well-intentioned idea of
consolation) that after all money cannot buy life! I remember a curious
instance to the contrary of this. In the old days of sailing-packets a
country gentleman embarked for Ireland, and when a few miles from land
broke a bloodvessel through seasickness. A doctor on board pronounced
that he would certainly die before the completion of the voyage if it
was continued; whereupon the sick man's friends consulted with the
captain, who convoked the passengers, and persuaded them to accept
compensation in proportion to their needs for allowing the vessel to be
put back; which was accordingly done.

One of the most popular fictions of our time was even written with this
very moral, that life is unpurchasable. Yet nothing is more certain than
that life is often lost through want of money--that is, of the obvious
means to save it. In such a case how truly has it been written that 'the
destruction of the poor is their poverty'! This, however, is scar