ent and the two smallest children had to manage to keep warm by
lying on the same bed, with a pile of old clothes and carpets over them.
Presently, however, the three elder children came in, half-frozen and
barefooted, scarcely able to talk, and discharged near the store the
contents of their aprons and bags, the result of their coal-picking
tour. Leaving to their father the care of reviving the fire, they, as of
a common consent, started for a closet, and drawing out a good-sized tin
pan full of boiled corn-meal, commenced a furious onslaught thereon. The
outer room measured some twelve by fourteen feet, and had no beds, but
its floor afforded sleeping accommodations to the five children. The
inner room was scarcely large enough to admit a middle-sized bedstead
used by the parents. When I left, the young ones had taken their places
for the night, and the man, having made a good fire, proceeded to assort
a barrel of apples, and his wife said it was the fourth time '_that
stupid man had gone through the same process without having done
anything._'

"Among guardians, especially, the custom was prevalent of fixing the
amount the boy or girl had to bring home in the evening. But not seldom
fathers were prompted by avarice to act still more cruelly against their
own offspring, and while the former punished the shortcomings of their
wards by furnishing them with meals of microscopic proportions, the
latter, on the presumption, I suppose, of paternal right, went so far as
to whip and even expel from home the son or sons who failed to come up
to their greedy expectations. At present, however, such cases are almost
unknown, owing to the sense of independence felt by the growing
generation and to our influence on the parents. But as late as three
years ago I had observed that a boy of twelve, who was very anxious to
learn, now and then was absent. One evening I called on him for
explanations, and he related that he was _'taxed'_ for eighty cents a
day, and every cent short of that amount was balanced by a proportionate
dose of cowhiding on his bare body. He entreated me most earnestly not
to say a word to his father on the subject, otherwise he would fare
still worse. Whenever, therefore, he failed to earn the eighty cents by
his boot-blacking vocation, he would not go home. This unnatural father
did not stop here; he did not care in the least how long his son would
remain out sleeping under market-stands and in newspaper rooms, b