cks near Tower Hill, this
meaning that he spent his days in the hold of a collier or on the deck,
guiding the coal basket which ascends from the hold through a "way" made
of broken oars lashed together, and by means of a wheel and rope is sent
on and emptied. Whether in hold or on deck it is one of the most
exhausting forms of labor, and the men, whose throats are lined with
coal dust, wash them out with floods of beer. Naturally they are all
intemperate, and the wages taken home are small in proportion to their
thirst. And as an evening solace, the father, who had once been footman
in a good family, and married the lady's maid (which fact accounted for
the unusual quality of Nelly's English), beat them all around, weeping
maudlin tears over them in the morning, and returning at night to
duplicate the occasion for more.

The mother had made constant fight for respectability. She did such
dressmaking as the neighborhood offered, but they moved constantly as
fortunes grew lower and lower, sheltering at last in two rooms in a
rookery in Tower Hamlets.

Here came the final disablement. The father, a little drunker than
usual, pushed the wife downstairs and their Billy after her, the result
being a broken hip for the first and a broken arm for the last. Nelly,
who had begun to stitch sacks not long before, filled her place as she
could, and cared for the other seven, all not much more than babies, and
most of them in time mercifully removed by death. She was but twelve
when her responsibility began, and it did not end when the mother came
home, to be chiefly bedridden for such days as remained. The three
little boys were all "mud-larks," that is, prowled along the river
shore, picking up any odds and ends that could be sold to the rag-shop
or for firewood, and their backs were scored with the strap which the
father carried in his pocket and took out for his evening's occupation
when he came.

The mother, sitting up in bed and knitting or crocheting for a small
shop near by, fared no better than the rest, for Billy, who tried to
stand between them, only infuriated the brute the more. The crisis came
when he one night stole the strap from his father's pocket and cut it
into pieces. Nelly, who was now earning fair wages, had long thought
that her mother's life would be easier without them; and now, as Billy
announced that he had done for himself and must run, she decided to run
too.

"I told mother I'd have a bit of a room