fortnight ago Mr. ---- was taken ill, and died last week,
the doctors say, of sheer physical exhaustion, not
thirty-nine years old, leaving eight young children, and his
poor widow expecting her confinement, and so weak and ill as
to be incapable of effort. This youth is the eldest, and the
other children range downwards to a babe of eighteen months.
There is not one who knew him, I believe, that will not give
cheerfully, to their ability, for his widow and children;
but such aid will go but a little way in this painful case;
and it would be a real boon to this poor widow if some of
her children could be got into an Orphan Asylum. * * *

If you are able to do anything I would send particulars of
the age and sex of the children.

I remain, dear Sir, ever obediently yours,
FRED. J. SHIELDS.

P.S.--I ought to say that poor ---- has been quite unable to
save, with his large family; and that they would be utterly
destitute now, but for the kindness of some with whom he was
professionally connected.

112. Now this case, of which you see the entire authenticity, is, out
of the many of which I hear continually, a _notably_ sad one only in
so far as the artist in question has died of distress while he was
catering for the public amusement. Hardly a week now passes without
some such misery coming to my knowledge; and the quantity of pain, and
anxiety of daily effort, through the best part of life, ending all at
last in utter grief, which the lower middle classes in England are now
suffering, is so great that I feel constantly as if I were living in
one great churchyard, with people all round me clinging feebly to the
edges of the open graves, and calling for help, as they fall back into
them, out of sight.

113. Now I want you to observe here, in a definite case, the working
of your beautiful modern political economy of "supply and demand."
Here is a man who could have "supplied" you with good and entertaining
art,--say for fifty good years,--if you had paid him enough for his
day's work to find him and his children peacefully in bread. But you
like having your prints as cheap as possible--you triumph in the
little that your laugh costs--you take all you can get from the man,
give the least you can give to him,--and you accordingly kill him at
thirty-nine; and thereafter have his chi