be likely to make him an offer for that precious
article?

They are wonderful, these Lancashire people.
They are no beggars. I almost think that if we
were so wicked as to leave them to starve, they
would just do so, without a word. There is
no truckling and cringing on the one hand,
there is no insolence or coldness on the other.
They are independent. Their self-respect is
not injured by the relief they receive; yet
for that relief they are most obviously and
undisguisedly grateful. If a college of wise
men, wise in manners, arbitrators in matters of
taste, had assembled in committee to decide
how a community should bear itself under such
circumstances as these which now affect this
cotton community, they could never have hit
out anything half so complete, and so
delicately fine, as these people have hit out
unconsciously with their own unaided but unerring
instinct.

As long as hope and energy are left to these
suffering people the case is not at its worst,
and these seem rarely or never to have deserted
the workmen whom trouble has thus overtaken
for the first time. It is widely different with
the habitual pauper: the man long accustomed
to penury and dependence. This last makes no
attempt to face his antagonist, Want. He has
ceased to strive against misfortune. He has
lost pride, self-respect, every sustaining quality.
I went down into a certain cellar at Blackburn,
where a wretched itinerant glazier, out of work,
was sitting, trying to do something with a grate
full of cinders and ashes, with one very dull red
spark in the middle of it—and anything like the
misery of that scene I never beheld. The door
of the room, which opened straight into the
area, was close to the head of a gaunt wooden
bedstead, which was black with age, and smoke,
and dirt. The man's wife was lying ill in the
bed—if that can be called a bed, which was only
a piece of sacking stretched across a wooden
framework, with a few miserable rags over it.
I could not see the woman where she lay, but I
could hear her groaning, and complaining of her
sufferings in a dull monotonous way, and in a
wretched peevish voice. I believe there were
seven occupants of that bed at night. There
were so many that the man, as he sat poking
and fidgeting at the ashes, said there was no
room for him, and he could get no sleep. Some
of the children, pale, dirty, and squalid, stood
about the room. There was nowhere to sit
down. The floor was of stone, and the two
chairs were entirely without seats. They were
bare frames of wood, with tattered ends of
rushes sticking out where the seats had been.
This miserable man at the head—what a
headship!—of this family was an instance of a
poor, lost, despairing creature. He had little
to say. That dull incessant complaining of the
suffering woman on the bed, may have jarred
upon him and added a drop more to his cup of
misery —or it may not. He went on fidgeting
with his finger, or with a bit of stick, at that
hopeless mass of grey, calcined, powdery cinders,
and his seat was the edge of one of those
two bottomless chairs. The grate and the
hearth were covered and choked up with
cinders. No attempt had been made to remove
ihem. In fact, it was a case of entire giving
up. The man had gone about the neighbourhood
mending broken panes of glass. He had
had an accident, and, falling from a scaffolding,
had broken two or three of his ribs on the left
side, over the heart, and since that happened
had been unfitted for any hard work—quite
unable to lift any heavy weight, for instance. It
is not at all improbable that even this poor
wretch had suffered by the cotton stoppage.
No doubt the poor among whom his trade lay
chiefly, would rather now stuff a few rags into
the gap caused by a broken window, or paste
the orifice over with paper, than employ the
glazier. Thus men of all sorts of trades suffer
by such a disaster as this in Lancashire, which
seems at first sight to affect one class only.
Of all the poor places I went into at Manchester,
Blackburn, and Rochdale, that poor
glazier's cellar has left the dreariest
impression on my mind.

In close juxta-position with this, let me put a
cellar or kitchen of a more hopeful and
encouraging kind. It was tenanted by two women.
It was as ill off for furniture as it well could
be. The floor was of stone, but very clean.
Here, too, was one of those frigid wooden
bare bedsteads, but it looked clean, and the
straw or shavings which stood in place of the
mattress were decently covered up. What
there was in the room was placed in an orderly
and symmetrical fashion; and an old chest,
and an object which stands out in my memory
as a bandbox, were both covered neatly
at the top with handkerchiefs, or some other
kind of clean cloths, so as to give them a sort
of extravagant air of ottomans. Whether this
was the work of the woman I saw in the room,
or of her fellow-tenant, I know not; but the
appearance and behaviour of the woman whom
I found here was quite consistent with such
modest heroism. She had had a son, poor creature,
who had worked for her, but now they had
been obliged to break up their little establishment
and separate. As the poor woman spoke
of her boy, her strength gave way, and the
tears came up into her eyes: standing there,
as some very bitter tears will do, without
overflowing.

Little things these, no doubt. An old bandbox
set against a wall, with a clean handkerchief,
or duster, mayhap, stretched neatly over
it, is not much to some people. But, indeed,
such little things make all the difference; and
by them, one may tell to which of two great
classes people belong, and whether they are to
be ranked among those who do all they can
under all circumstances, and try to make the
best of everything, or sink prostrate under the
first stroke of misfortune without making a
single effort, worthy of the name, to save
themselves. These two cellars were each eloquent
in their different ways.