washing; and having to hurry home from her labour to attend to that
sick girl through eleven long years. Such a life is a good deal like
a slow funeral. It is struggling for a few breaths more, with the
worms crawling over you. And yet I am told that the old woman was
not accustomed to "make a poor mouth," as the saying goes. How true
it is that "a great many people in this world have only one form of
rhetoric for their profoundest experiences, namely--to waste away
and die."

Our next visit was to an Irish family. There was an old woman in,
and a flaxen-headed lad about ten years of age. She was sitting upon
a low chair,--the only seat in the place,--and the tattered lad was
kneeling on the ground before her, whilst she combed his hair out.
"Well, missis, how are you getting on amongst it?" "Oh, well, then,
just middlin', Mr T. Ye see, I am busy combin' this boy's hair a
bit, for 'tis gettin' like a wisp o' hay." There was not a vestige
of furniture in the cottage, except the chair the old woman sat on.
She said, "I did sell the childer's bedstead for 2s. 6d.; an' after
that I sold the bed from under them for 1s. 6d., just to keep them
from starvin' to death. The childer had been two days without mate
then, an' faith I couldn't bear it any longer. After that I did sell
the big pan, an' then the new rockin' chair, an' so on, one thing
after another, till all wint entirely, barrin' this I am sittin' on,
an' they wint for next to nothin' too. Sure, I paid 9s. 6d. for the
bed itself, which was sold for 1s. 6d. We all sleep on straw now."
This family was seven in number. The mill at which they used to work
had been stopped about ten months. One of the family had found
employment at another mill, three months out of the ten, and the old
man himself had got a few days' work in that time. The rest of the
family had been wholly unemployed, during the ten months. Except the
little money this work brought in, and a trifle raised now and then
by the sale of a bit of furniture when hunger and cold pressed them
hard, the whole family had been living upon 5s. a week for the last
ten months. The rent was running on. The eldest daughter was twenty-
eight years of age. As we came away Mr Toulmin said to me, "Well, I
have called at that house regularly for the last sixteen weeks, and
this is the first time I ever saw a fire in the place. But the old
man has got two days' work this week--that may account for the
fire."

It was now clos