old, "was just coming in for dinner, pale and apparently exhausted
by the effort of climbing the stairs, and sank down upon a rough plank
bench near the door." He worked in a glass-factory, earning a bare
subsistence. "He is a little old man at twelve," says the narrator, "the
paleness of his sunken cheeks was relieved by the hectic flush; his
hollow dry eye was moistened by an occasional tear; and his thin white
lip quivered as he told me his simple story; how he was braving hunger
and death--for he cannot live long--to help his mother pay the rent and
buy her bread. 'Half-past ten at night is early for him to return,' said
the mother; 'sometimes it is half-past eleven and I am sitting up for
him.' Sometimes, in the morning, she finds him awake, 'but he don't want
to get up, and he puts his hands on his sides and says, 'Mother, it
hurts me here when I breathe.' I can work, and I do work,' adds she,
'all the time--but I can't make as much as my little boy.'"

One more account. It is of a beggar-girl who "lives," as the narrative
goes on to say, "in a rear building where full daylight never shines--in
a cellar-room where pure dry air is never breathed. A quick gentle girl
of twelve years, she speaks to the visitor as he enters--'Mother does
not see you, sir, because she's blind.' The mother was an old woman of
sixty-five or seventy years, with six or seven others seated around.
'But you told me you and your mother and little sister lived by
yourselves.' 'Yes, sir--here it is;'" and at the end of the passage the
visitor discovers a narrow place, about five feet by three. The bed was
rolled up in one corner, and nearly filled the room. "'But where is your
stove?' 'We have none, sir. The people in the next room are very kind to
mother, and let her come in there to warm--because, you know, I get half
the coal.' 'But where do you cook your food?' 'We never cook any, sir;
it is already cooked. I go early in the morning to get coal and chips
for the fire, and I must have two baskets of coal and wood to kindle
with by noon. That's mother's half. Then when the people have eaten
dinner, I go round to get the bits they leave. I can get two baskets of
coal every day now; but when it gets cold, and we must have a great
deal, it is hard for me to find any--there's so many poor chaps to pick
it. Sometimes the _ladies_ speak cross to me, and shut the door hard at
me, and sometimes the _gentlemen_ slap me in the face, and kick my
basket,