rear, where the husband is out hawking looking-
glasses obtained on ''sale or return" from
the manufacturers, and by means of which he
earns six, seven, and sometimes eight shillings
a week. The children are taking boxes home,
the fire is out, and as the invalid tells her
ailments to the district visitor, want of nourishment
is as easily discernible in her feeble tremulous
voice, as if we had been told in so many
words of her lack of food.

These are a few of the cases to be seen in a
day's walk. The experience they give might have
been multiplied indefinitely. Right and left, in
front and rear, of the border line between Spitalfields
and Bethnal-green upon which we stood,
is a seething mass of hopeless, hopeless poverty.
Such work as we have seen is the means of life
to thousands upon thousands of women and children.
In one of the homes left undescribed,
one baby of a year and ten months old was
busily labouring away with its brothers and
sisters, and contributing its quota of exertion
with the rest. In White-street, a regular labour-
market for boys and girls is held on Monday
and Tuesday morning, from eight to ten A.M.,
and here children of all ages may be hired by
the week or month. Domestic service is,
however, so distasteful to these people, that, though
servants are wanted in the district as elsewhere,
there is much the usual difficulty in obtaining
them.

In every case when a situation was suggested
for the young women whom we saw box-making,
the reply was evasive; and a few months ago good
and remunerative situations were refused under
the following circumstances. One Saturday, a
poor woman was visited at her home by some
benevolent gentlemen who interested themselves
in the sanitary arrangements of the district. The
cholera was then at its height, and on calling on
the same woman the next Monday, they found
she had died, and had been buried, in the few
hours which had intervened since they found
her alive and well. She left a large family.
As her three eldest girls were fit for service,
comfortable places were found for them, but
refused. Argument and remonstrance were
ineffectual, and pictures of the discomforts and
laboriousness of match-box making were met by,
"It's only just play for the fingers, sir." This
is a fair example of the views and opinions of
many of the girls we have seen. They accept
their poverty bravely; take gladly any help
proffered; but ignorantly prefer the privations
and misery of their present life to what they hold
to be the restrictions and drawbacks of domestic
service. The married women are tied to their
homes, and, spurred by stern hard necessity,
the children take to work much as those in
more favoured walks do to play. "The child I
buried was only two years and five months, and
he'd been at box-making a good six months,"
said the dustman's wife, "and they take to it
as natural as sitting down to a meal."

Not the least suggestive part of what we saw
was the wholesome and positively jolly look of
many of the boys and girls. There was, as we
have endeavoured to show, abundant evidence of
sickness and sorrow; there were plenty of wan
and stunted frames; but there were also
many rosy-cheeked lads and lasses, who were
chirruping over their toil as merrily and as
heartily as any plough-boy whistling for want
of thought. When a wretched mother is
accused of "givin' herself airs" because her
infant daughter's miserable condition has become
known, we seem to have in rough rude fashion
the public opinion of this poverty-weighted place.
That children should never see green fields or
flowers, should never have a toy, never enjoy the
innocent amusements appropriate to their age,
is sad enough. Human nature, however, is
happily so constituted, that harmless fun and
healthy laughter may be extracted from the
most barren materials; and among the underfed,
over-worked, ill-clad, women and children
we visited, were as bright eyes and as ready
smiles, and at least as much honest hearty
cheerful helpful contentment as can be found
among their brothers and sisters who have not
learnt sympathy through suffering, and to whom
hunger and destitution have been things to read
about, not taste.

THE LIVELY JENNY.

WHEN, after a long and proper probation, I
was fairly set up and married to my Fanny — a
fine bold girl that liked me, I believe, as much
as I liked her — we sensibly agreed that, instead
of setting up housekeeping — furniture and such
inconveniences — we should suit ourselves with
a house that was infinitely more to our taste.
Fanny had been born and bred on the north-west
coast of Ireland, beside the breakers of the
Atlantic. She was a handsome clever creature,
with a classical and reflective face — a
born sailor, whom it was pleasant, when our
dainty guests were growing green and
uncomfortable, to see sitting on the deck, with rising
colour, welcoming the stiff breezes.

I had done a good deal in coast-sailing, and
was to have been put into the navy (but wasn't,
which is a long story); so, instead of going
through the anxieties of selecting a new and
plastery house, with furniture that was to prove
prematurely infirm and crippled, we read the
one thought in each other's eyes — a yacht! It
was spring. Such a thing was soon "picked
up." It was a nautical friend living near
Leamington that "looked out" for the yacht for us — a
man of large experience and with an eye for a
"good cut of a thing." After a time he "picked
up" our little craft — the very thing for us, and
a dead bargain besides — a tight handy little
schooner, a good sea-boat that shook the waves
from her like a spirited horse, easily handled,
thirty tons, roomy below, airy, large for that
tonnage, and built of mahogany. She cost us
only three hundred pounds, was reckoned a
in, and was called The Lively Jenny.
It was a joyful morning when we learned that
she was Iying in Kingstown harbour, having