to my
companion, who has the charge of visiting this part of the ward.
Leaning against the door-cheek of one of these dim, unwholesome
hovels, he said, "Well, missis; how are you getting on?" There was a
tall, thin woman inside. She seemed to be far gone in some
exhausting illness. With slow difficulty she rose to her feet, and,
setting her hands to her sides, gasped out, "My coals are done." He
made a note, and said, I'll send you some more." Her other wants
were regularly seen to on a certain day every week. Ours was an
accidental visit. We now turned up to another nook of the court,
where my companion told me there was a very bad case. He found the
door fast. We looked through the window into that miserable man-
nest. It was cold, gloomy, and bare. As Corrigan says, in the
"Colleen Bawn," "There was nobody in--but the fire--and that was
gone out." As we came away, a stalwart Irishman met us at a turn of
the court, and said to my companion, "Sure, ye didn't visit this
house." " Not to-day;" replied the visitor. "I'll come and see you
at the usual time." The people in this house were not so badly off
as some others. We came down the steps of the court into the fresher
air of Friargate again.

Our next walk was to Heatley Street. As we passed by a cluster of
starved loungers, we overheard one of them saying to another,
"Sitho, yon's th' soup-maister, gooin' a-seein' somebry." Our time
was getting short, so we only called at one house in Heatley Street,
where there was a family of eleven--a decent family, a well-kept and
orderly household, though now stript almost to the bare ground of
all worldly possession, sold, bitterly, piecemeal, to help to keep
the bare life together, as sweetly as possible, till better days.
The eldest son is twenty-seven years of age. The whole family has
been out of work for the last seventeen weeks, and before that, they
had been working only short time for seven months. For thirteen
weeks they had lived upon less than one shilling a head per week,
and I am not sure that they did not pay the rent out of that; and
now the income of the whole eleven is under 16s., with rent to pay.
In this house they hold weekly prayer-meetings. Thin picking--one
shilling a week, or less--for all expenses, for one person. It is
easier to write about it than to feel what it means, unless one has
tried it for three or four months. Just round the corner from
Heatley Street, we stopped at the open door of a very