fering as she does, and yet remain so patient and so
hopeful.

Add to the duties I have enumerated the time when sickness and death
enter the home. Mrs. Grundy has declared that even poor people must put
on "mourning," and must bury their dead with excessive expenditure, and
Mrs. Grundy must be obeyed.

But what struggles poor wives make to do it! but a "nice" funeral is
a fascinating sight to the poor. So thousands of poor men's wives deny
themselves many comforts, and often necessaries, that they may for
certain have a few pounds, should any of their children die. Religiously
they pay a penny or twopence a week for each of their children to some
industrial insurance company for this purpose.

A few pounds all at once loom so large that they forget all the toil,
stress and self-denial they have undergone to keep those pence regularly
paid. Decent "mourning" and "nice funerals" are greatly admired, for if
a working man's wife accepts parish aid at such time, why then she has
fallen low indeed.

And for the time when a new life comes into light, the poor man's wife
must make provision. At this time anxiety is piled upon anxiety. There
must be no parish doctor, no parish nurse; out of her insufficient
income she makes weekly payments to a local dispensary that during
sickness the whole household may be kept free of doctor's bills. An
increased payment for herself secures her, when her time comes, from
similar worry. But the nurse must be paid, so during the time of her
"trouble" the poor woman screws, schemes and saves a little money; money
that ought in all truth to have been spent upon herself, that a weekly
nurse may attend her. But every child is dearer than the last, and the
wonderful love she has for every atom of humanity born to her repays all
her sufferings and self-denial.

So I ask for the poor man's wife not only admiration and consideration,
but, if you will, some degree of pity also. I would we could make her
burdens easier, her sorrows less, and her pleasures more numerous. Most
devoutly I hope that the time may soon arrive when "rent day" will
be less dreaded, and when the collector will be satisfied with a less
proportion of the family's earnings. For this is a great strain upon
the poor man's wife, a strain that is never absent! for through times
of poverty and sickness, child birth and child death, persistently and
inexorably that day comes round. Undergoing constant sufferings and
ceaseless anxie