student does not practise at the expense of the
poor, as by experiment upon the vile. He may
be weak in himself, but he is strong in having
at his back the best help in the world, ready at
a word to come with succour to the side of the
most miserable pallet. I required no help. Mrs.
Part was a mother for the fourteenth time; but
more than half of her children were already lying
in the rank little square known as the church-
yard of St. Andrew's, Holborn. Two old women
in beards, from a room below, helped me to
welcome the poor little baby to its heritage of
want. It consoled me in my inexperience to
hear these women in the next room favourably
reviewing my first effort, and crediting me with
an experience that I did not possess. To me the
scene was new, and so were the emotions it
occasioned. Mrs. Part had informed me abundantly
about her household life, about the births and lives
and deaths of children, and her husband's industry.
He was out then, when it was nearly midnight,
and had been labouring all day with his barrow-
load of penny trinkets and small toys. The
most wretched, while there is hope in them,
cannot endure bare life without making some
faint effort to beautify it. But it is hard for the
seller of those luxuries of painted parrots, and
gay bits of picture, and bead bracelets, whenever
a frost comes or a new pressure of pestilence
or famine.

This poor woman and her husband, prospering
through sobriety, were reckoned rich in Saffron-
hill. They managed to rent two rooms for
themselves and their six living children. The back
room contained but a few old beds laid on the
floor, a deal chair, a fragment of looking-glass,
and an earthen basin. I was in the front room,
where there were some coloured pictures on the
wall, a very little crockery in a cupboard, a
saucepan and a frying-pan, the woman's own bed
on the floor, some old rush-bottomed chairs, and
a deal table. The infant lay wrapped in an apron
on its mother's arm. What others know as
possibilities of life were to it impossibilities; the
dread of others was its certainty, if it should
live. Not the less happy was the mother's face.
Had she been a great lady, with a husband
anxious for an heir to his estates, there would
have been no truer joy at her heart than there
seemed to be in it as she greeted weary Mr.
Part, when he at last entered, with the cry, "It's
a boy, John." A boy can earn. Misery cannot
hunt a boy so easily as it can hunt a girl into
the toils, and bring him down to shame.

"Very well, Sue. Your servant, sir. I ask
your pardon. Here's his hansel."

"You've had a long day, poor fellow."

"And a good one, girl. What'll I get you?
See here." It was a great spectacle of coppers,
worth four shillings-and-twopence. Fourteen
hours' work cheerfully done for a return of four
and twopence, out of which it is to be hoped
that three shillings were profit.

"Wealth indeed! Some years ago it was
calculated that the poor throughout the country
keep themselves and do not fall upon the rates,
if they can earn four pounds a year per back
and mouth, we must not say per head, since the
head goes for nothing.

"And what did little Bill get for his
winkles?"

"Eightpence; but he came home with a black
eye. He couldn't help it; it wasn't fighting; somebody
that came out of a public house hit him in
Leather-lane."

"Ah, well," said the father, "be it as it may.
Poor boy! He'll have enough thumping about.
Is a fellow to look at the baby?"

Certainly he was, but I was sorry to disturb
his happiness, for there was something to be
written or signed, and he was then at his wit's
end for writing material. I had to make out
with a pointed stick dipped into ink, of which
the material was scraped out of the chimney.

All this happened some time ago. The baby
lived and grew, by help of his father's energetic
labour, and in due time, by help of his own toil,
to be a stout young man. Several odd chances
combined to bring the Parts, at sundry times,
across my path in life. This baby went by my
recommendation, as a tall and rather handsome
young fellow, named Thomas, into the service of
one of my oldest and kindest friends, a wealthy
bachelor at Kensington. The family was
dispersed. The father was dead, the mother was
in the workhouse. One girl had tried farm
service in Leicestershire, and there got married.
One boy was a hawker, as his father had been.
One had, to the never ending grief of his mother,
taken to bad courses, and been sentenced to
transportation. The two girls were honest
girls; one, as I have just said, married, and the
other served as scullery-maid in a West-end
hotel.

The prosperous man of the family is Tom, the
footman, who is scraping together savings from
his wages, with the design of setting up as soon
as he can a little shop, and fetching home his
mother from the workhouse. I have seen this
mother and son together when the mother nursed,
with all her love, the helpless son. I am to see,
also, the son nursing his mother. My friend
Tom, coming to me lately with a message from
his master, answered with a troubled face my
question as to the well-being of his family:

"Peggy, poor girl, in Leicestershire, is
nursing a sick husband and two little babies.
There's nothing coming in except from the club.
I've helped her to keep off the parish, for she
has a high heart, and they've worked hard and
thriven, though her Dick is but a farm labourer.
They'll do when he comes round again, I have no
fear. But my heart aches for little Susie—that's
my sister you know, sir, at the great hotel.
There wasn't a brighter little darling upon earth
than she was when she went there as scullery-maid
six years ago. And how she has kept her place,
and bore everything, and stripped herself to help
raise money to defend our Will when he got into
trouble!" (Our Will is the unhappy youth who
has disgraced the family, but instead of shutting
him out of their hearts this brother of his and
his sisters speak of him with a peculiar tenderness.)
"We all petted Susie, and there was