relieve the poor, the best of the poor detest our mercies, hide their
heads from us, and shame us by starving to death in the midst of us, it
is a pass impossible of prosperity, impossible of continuance. It may
not be so written in the Gospel according to Podsnappery; you may not
'find these words' for the text of a sermon, in the Returns of the Board
of Trade; but they have been the truth since the foundations of the
universe were laid, and they will be the truth until the foundations of
the universe are shaken by the Builder. This boastful handiwork of
ours, which fails in its terrors for the professional pauper, the sturdy
breaker of windows and the rampant tearer of clothes, strikes with a
cruel and a wicked stab at the stricken sufferer, and is a horror to
the deserving and unfortunate. We must mend it, lords and gentlemen and
honourable boards, or in its own evil hour it will mar every one of us.

Old Betty Higden fared upon her pilgrimage as many ruggedly honest
creatures, women and men, fare on their toiling way along the roads
of life. Patiently to earn a spare bare living, and quietly to die,
untouched by workhouse hands--this was her highest sublunary hope.

Nothing had been heard of her at Mr Boffin's house since she trudged
off. The weather had been hard and the roads had been bad, and her
spirit was up. A less stanch spirit might have been subdued by such
adverse influences; but the loan for her little outfit was in no part
repaid, and it had gone worse with her than she had foreseen, and she
was put upon proving her case and maintaining her independence.

Faithful soul! When she had spoken to the Secretary of that 'deadness
that steals over me at times', her fortitude had made too little of it.
Oftener and ever oftener, it came stealing over her; darker and ever
darker, like the shadow of advancing Death. That the shadow should
be deep as it came on, like the shadow of an actual presence, was in
accordance with the laws of the physical world, for all the Light that
shone on Betty Higden lay beyond Death.

The poor old creature had taken the upward course of the river Thames as
her general track; it was the track in which her last home lay, and of
which she had last had local love and knowledge. She had hovered for a
little while in the near neighbourhood of her abandoned dwelling, and
had sold, and knitted and sold, and gone on. In the pleasant towns of
Chertsey, Walton, Kingston, and Staines, her figu