Crown Inn gave them a dinner and half-a crown
each to help them on their way.

Mr. Meriton and Mr. Rogers, the two
principal officers of the Halsewell, were staunch
friends; they had only twenty-five days before
returned from a long and painful voyage in the
Pigot, having been among the few who had
survived a great mortality with which that
vessel had been visited. Captain Pierce stood
very high in the confidence of the Company for
his professional skill, good sense, and probity.
His daughters were beautiful, amiable, and
clever girls. He left six other children.

Sir George L. Staunton and his wife had a
narrow escape of perishing in the Halsewell.
Sir George, who had been Lord Macartney's
favourite secretary during the conclusion of a
treaty with Tippoo Sahib, was about to return
to India, and had actually taken berths on
board the unlucky vessel, when the announcement
of Lord Macartney's immediate return to
England induced him to delay his own and his
wife's departure.

Travellers who visit the Dorsetshire coast, to
sketch the red rocks of Studland Bay, or the
stony valley of Durlston Head, on some calm
summer evening when the transparent green
wave washes over the shingle pebbles and turns
them for a moment to lumps of emerald, will
suddenly, as they round the murmuring shore
by Winspit and Dancing-ledge Quarry, come
upon a row of humble, tranquil, grassy mounds.
Those mounds mark the graves of the crew and
passengers of the unfortunate Halsewell, East
Indiaman, and that lonely spot is Seacombe Vale.

LUCIFER-BOX MAKING.

"Giv' herself airs she has, ever since she got
up in the world through 'aving her little girl
put in the newspapers, which it offended her
rarely, though she's got beef and red port-wine
every day through it, all the same. What call
was there to pick out her little girl indeed, and
kick up a fuss about her making three gross o'
match-boxes a day, and she got a mother of her
own? Why, that child working there is younger
than what she is, and ain't got no parents at
all, and she'd make her six or seven gross a day
if she were put to it. Wot's three gross to
make a fuss about, that's what I say, and wot
'ave the newspapers got to do with it at all?"

We are in the centre of a lucifer-box
manufactory in Bethnal-green, and the speaker is
indignant at popular sympathy having been roused
for what she considers a very common-place bit
of business. That children should toil
unceasingly from an age when they ought to be in
their cradles, is to her one of the inevitable
conditions of existence; and though unable to
impugn its truthfulness, she condemns as mawkish
a statement recently put forward by a local
clergyman concerning the infant daughter of
one of her neighbours and friends.

Up a dark passage and a darker stair — where
the heavy balustrades and deep-set glassless
windows speak of comforts long since fled — and
we are in two garrets, one opening into the
other, and both thronged with labourers busily at
work. We have passed huge blocks of wood
on the first landing, of the size and shape of those
strewn about shipwrights' shops and dockyards,
and now walk into an atmosphere redolent of
deal-shavings, sulphur, and dye. Boys and girls,
some mere infants, others sturdy striplings, and
all busily at work, are in every available corner,
planing, stamping, cutting out, pasting, folding
into box-shapes, and in other ways converting
wood into the neat and slender cases we buy
filled with lucifer matches, at a halfpenny and a
penny each. Two stout youths at the window
are rapidly dashing off thin sections from a
block of wood; children pick these up as they
fall, sort them, and hand them to other children,
who ply machines and crease the slips into the
folds requisite for converting them into boxes.
This done, the master workman, who is at once
employer and fellow-labourer, dips their ends in
magenta-coloured dye, and hands them to his
wife in the adjoining garret. She sits at a long
table, where girls of all ages paste on the paper
coverings, bend the slips into shape, and turn
the finished box upon the floor. Fingers and
the paste-brush are alone used at this stage.

"Friday is our busiest day, because, you see,
we send in on the Saturday to receive the
week's money, and often have to make up a
goodish quantity when there's a pressure. Me
and the eight girls, you see, have turned out as
many as ninety gross between Friday and
Saturday morning. Oh, no, they don't go away
on the Friday night — that wouldn't do at all.
They stay here, and work on, while I sit on the
floor and never get up or go to bed until I've
tied all up in bundles of a gross each. Yes, it's
hard work enough, but not fit to put in the
newspapers" — a constantly recurring grievance
this — "let alone make a stir about one little
girl, when there's hundreds would do more
work and is worse off than wot she is. Our
regular hours for the boys you see in the other
shop is eight to eight, which makes with dinner
and tea-time about ten hours a day. Here, in
my room, they work according to pressure,
and pretty close we have to keep to it, there's
no denying. What's the dye for? Well, it
gives a finish to the boxes, and makes 'em look
worth more money for the shops. The people
we work for, were the first to introduce it, and
the boxes you see are the best of their kind.
Threepence a gross we pay for making, and as
there's not more labour in these than the
commoner sorts, it ain't so bad. One hundred and
forty-four boxes folded, pasted, and shaped for
threepence? Ay, and a good deal less too, I
can tell you. Twopence-farthing and twopence-
halfpenny is the regular price for the cheaper
sorts you'll see, when you visit the houses
where they're bein' made. My master and me
ain't got no family of our own, so we call these
girls and boys our children, and, though they've
to work hard, they're well off compared to
hundreds of others."