but finds the words stick in her throat at sight
of the indifferent faces around her. Exit.

A guardian (struck with a humane idea, and
yawning): " I wonder if the tea is ready?"

Disturbance heard without. Enter relieving
officer hurriedly.

Relieving officer: " Here's that Missus Blank
again, and she won't go away without seeing
the board."

Chairman (indignant): " She's after the
hour; she'll have to wait our time. Is tea
ready?"

Relieving officer: "Not quite, sir."

Chairman (making a virtue of the occasion
with a bad grace): " Then we'll see the
woman."

Enter third applicant: a woman of stout
build, coarse features, and large red hands.

Chairman (sternly): " What have you been
making a noise about?"

Applicant: " If you please, sir, they wasn't
for letting me in."

Chairman: " They had no right to let you
in——you're behind time."

Applicant: "I mistook the house, sir."

Chairman: " That's none of our business.
What do you want?"

Applicant (crying): " My husband's gone
away and left me." (Guardians look suspicious).

Chairman: "Send the police after him.
What was he?"

Applicant: " A coster, sir, and he's taken
away the barrow and left me nothing to get a
living with."

Chairman (brusquely): "Get a basket."

Applicant: " I haven't got a farthing atwixt
me and starvation, sir, let alone the price of a
basket."

Chairman: "Then you ought to get work.
There's plenty of work for them that's willing."
(Guardians' heads nod in confirmation: "Plenty
of work for them that's willing.") " A big
strong woman like you ought to be ashamed
to ask help from the parish."

Applicant (fervently): "And so l am, sir,
God knows."

Relieving officer: " I've had a good deal of
trouble with this woman, sir."

Chairman: " She'd better not trouble you
much more. Eighteenpence a week for a
mouth, and stop it if she doesn't behave herself."

Exit applicant, and the guardians adjourn to
another apartment wherein a table is laid with
all the appurtenances of a substantial tea. The
guardians are mortal again.

Answer to a remonstrance offered, made by
a guardian who was in his own family a kind
husband and father.

"Do you expect us to pat them" (the poor)
"on the head, call them good boys and girls,
and tell them never to mind about work, that
the parish will take care of them? Why, sir,
it would be a premium upon idleness. I have
as much commiseration for misfortune as any
man can have; but it is not only misfortune
that sends us applicants for relief. More than
half of them are idle vagabonds and lazy women.
The parish expects us to keep down the poor
rate, and we can't do that if we are to make it
a smooth and pleasant thing to apply for relief.
We can't always distinguish between the
deserving and the undeserving, and we are
compelled by our position to be sharp and hasty."

That is the guardians' theory, and its error
is patent. Granting the difficulty of distinguishing
between good and bad, the fact that one
man is a vagabond is no argument for treating
with indignity an honest man who may be
simply unfortunate. Harsh tones and looks can
make the simplest words sound very cruelly to
the ears of one truly in trouble; but neither
harsh words nor grudging gift will deter the
scamp from seeking and accepting relief. It is
only those who really should be helped, that
wince under the sting.

Result: that the object of charity is wholly
missed, and the poor-rate is kept down at the
expense of the people whom it was righteously
intended to serve.

BLOSSOM AND BLIGHT.

[IN a letter to the Editor of the MANCHESTER
COURIER, confirming the report of the extraordinary
death-rate in some of the streets and courts of
Manchester and Salford (one in ten per annum),
Mr. James Higson, rent-collector, of Ardwick-green,
Manchester, makes the following heart-touching
statement. " As a last resort, old people, before
they will enter the workhouse, huddle together in a
room let at about a shilling per week, and there die.
But they are not natives of the street. No; they
were born where the apple-tree blossoms in spring,
and the yellow corn waves in harvest."]

FOR the home 'mid the orchards where blithe the
birds sing,
What wonder, dear children, each aged heart craves?
"They were born where the apple-tree blossoms in spring,"
And rippling " in harvest the yellow corn waves."
They are worn the " old people;" they're weary and
cold,
Are bent and are broken, are palsied and pale;
And they long for the meadows enamell'd with gold,
And pine for the blooms that scent Blackmore's
sweet vale.*
They tremble and totter like babes on their feet,
They are jeer'd and they're jostled, and little boys
cry,
"Ho, Gaffer! Ho, Gammer! run fast up the street,
The drums are aye beating, the Queen's coming by!"
They are feeble and famish'd; their faculties fail;
Past labour; past effort; past all but the grave.
Meek brothers in sorrow to list their sad tale,
No friend in the wide world, to succour or save.

* The apple-orchards in the Vale of Blackmore in
the south of England, when in full bloom, form one
of the most beautiful sights in England: a sea
of blossoms rising upon the wind, and for miles
scenting the air with a perfume vying in sweetness
with that of the bean-flower, rapturously celebrated
by the Poet of The Seasons.