hat
he was doing well. But of late, he, too, had dropped out of sight. Of
three daughters who grew up, two were known to be dead, and the third was
believed to be in New Zealand. The old man was quite alone. He had no hope
and no joy, yet he was almost happy in a slow unfeeling way wandering
about the garden and the cottage. But in the winter his half-frozen blood
refused to circulate, his sinews would not move his willing limbs, and he
could not work.

His case came before the Board of Guardians. Those who knew all about him
wished to give him substantial relief in his own cottage, and to appoint
some aged woman as nurse--a thing that is occasionally done, and most
humanely. But there were technical difficulties in the way; the cottage
was either his own or partly his own, and relief could not be given to any
one possessed of 'property' Just then, too, there was a great movement
against, out-door relief; official circulars came round warning Boards to
curtail it, and much fuss was made. In the result the old man was driven
into the workhouse; muttering and grumbling, he had to be bodily carried
to the trap, and thus by physical force was dragged from his home. In the
workhouse there is of necessity a dead level of monotony--there are many
persons but no individuals. The dining-hall is crossed with forms and
narrow tables, somewhat resembling those formerly used in schools. On
these at dinner-time are placed a tin mug and a tin soup-plate for each
person; every mug and every plate exactly alike. When the unfortunates
have taken their places, the master pronounces grace from an elevated desk
at the end of the hall.

Plain as is the fare, it was better than the old man had existed on for
years; but though better it was not his dinner. He was not sitting in his
old chair, at his own old table, round which his children had once
gathered. He had not planted the cabbage, and tended it while it grew, and
cut it himself. So it was, all through the workhouse life. The dormitories
were clean, but the ward was not his old bedroom up the worm-eaten steps,
with the slanting ceiling, where as he woke in the morning he could hear
the sparrows chirping, the chaffinch calling, and the lark singing aloft.
There was a garden attached to the workhouse, where he could do a little
if he liked, but it was not his garden. He missed his plum-trees and
apples, and the tall pear, and the lowly elder hedge. He looked round
raising his head with d