ives were like those of their class: incessant
labor, sleeping in kennel-like rooms, eating rank pork and molasses,
drinking--God and the distillers only know what; with an occasional
night in jail, to atone for some drunken excess. Is that all of their
lives?--of the portion given to them and these their duplicates swarming
the streets to-day?--nothing beneath?--all? So many a political reformer
will tell you,--and many a private reformer, too, who has gone among
them with a heart tender with Christ's charity, and come out outraged,
hardened.

One rainy night, about eleven o'clock, a crowd of half-clothed women
stopped outside of the cellar-door. They were going home from the
cotton-mill.

"Good-night, Deb," said one, a mulatto, steadying herself against the
gas-post. She needed the post to steady her. So did more than one of
them.

"Dah's a ball to Miss Potts' to-night. Ye'd best come."

"Inteet, Deb, if hur'll come, hur'll hef fun," said a shrill Welsh voice
in the crowd.

Two or three dirty hands were thrust out to catch the gown of the woman,
who was groping for the latch of the door.

"No."

"No? Where's Kit Small, then?"

"Begorra! on the spools. Alleys behint, though we helped her, we dud.
An wid ye! Let Deb alone! It's ondacent frettin' a quite body. Be the
powers, an we'll have a night of it! there'll be lashin's o' drink,--the
Vargent be blessed and praised for't!"

They went on, the mulatto inclining for a moment to show fight, and drag
the woman Wolfe off with them; but, being pacified, she staggered away.

Deborah groped her way into the cellar, and, after considerable
stumbling, kindled a match, and lighted a tallow dip, that sent a yellow
glimmer over the room. It was low, damp,--the earthen floor covered with
a green, slimy moss,--a fetid air smothering the breath. Old Wolfe lay
asleep on a heap of straw, wrapped in a torn horse-blanket. He was a
pale, meek little man, with a white face and red rabbit-eyes. The woman
Deborah was like him; only her face was even more ghastly, her lips
bluer, her eyes more watery. She wore a faded cotton gown and a
slouching bonnet. When she walked, one could see that she was deformed,
almost a hunchback. She trod softly, so as not to waken him, and went
through into the room beyond. There she found by the half-extinguished
fire an iron saucepan filled with cold boiled potatoes, which she put
upon a broken chair with a pint-cup of ale. Placing the old candles