anywhere rather than here? Nothing easier
to find in Spitalfields. Enter by this doorway.

Up a dark narrow winding public stair,
such as are numerous in Lyons or in the
wynds and closes of the old town of
Edinburgh, and into a room where there are four
looms; one idle, three at work.

A wan thin eager-eyed man, weaving in
his shirt and trousers, stops the jarring of his
loom. He is the master of the place. Not an
Irishman himself, but of Irish descent.

"Good day!"

"Good day! " Passing his hand over his
rough chin, and feeling his lean throat.

"We are walking through Spitalfields, being
interested in the place. Will you allow us to
look at your work."

"Oh! certainly."

"It is very beautiful. Black velvet?"

"Yes. Every time I throw the shuttle, I
cut out this wire, as you see, and put it in
again—so!" Jarring and clashing at the
loom, and glancing at us with his eager eyes.

"It is slow work."

"Very slow." With a hard dry cough,
and the glance.

"And hard work."

"Very hard." With the cough again.

After a while, he once more stops, perceiving
that we really are interested, and says,
laying his hand upon his hollow breast and
speaking in an unusually loud voice, being
used to speak through the clashing of the loom:

"It tries the chest, you see, leaning for'ard
like this for fifteen or sixteen hours at a
stretch."

"Do you work so long at a time?"

"Glad to do it when I can get it to do. A
day's work like that, is worth a matter of
three shillings."

"Eighteen shillings a week."

"Ah! But it ain't always eighteen shillings
a week. I don't always get it, remember!
One week with another, I hardly get more
than ten, or ten-and-six."

"Is this Mr. Broadelle's loom?"

"Yes. This is. So is that one there;"
the idle one.

"And that, where the man is working?"

"That's another party's. The young man
working at it, pays me a shilling a week for
leave to work here. That's a shilling, you
know, off my rent of half-a-crown. It's rather
a large room."

"Is that your wife at the other loom?"

"That's my wife. She's making a
commoner sort of work, for bonnets and that."

Again his loom clashes and jars, and he
leans forward over his toil. In the window
by him, is a singing-bird in a little cage, which
trolls its song, and seems to think the loom
an instrument of music. The window, tightly
closed, commands a maze of chimney-pots,
and tiles, and gables. Among them, the
ineffectual sun, faintly contending with the
rain and mist, is going down. A yellow ray
of light crossing the weaver's eager eyes and
hollow white face, makes a shape something
like a pike-head on the floor.

The room is unwholesome, close, and dirty.
Through one part of it the staircase comes
up in a bulk, and roughly partitions off a
corner. In that corner are the bedstead and
the fireplace, a table, a chair or two, a kettle,
a tub of water, a little crockery. The looms
claim all the superior space and have it. Like
grim enchanters who provide the family with
their scant food, they must be propitiated
with the best accommodation. They bestride
the room, and pitilessly squeeze the children
—this heavy, watery-headed baby carried in
the arms of its staggering little brother, for
example—into corners. The children sleep at
night between the legs of the monsters, who
deafen their first cries with their whirr and
rattle, and who roar the same tune to them
when they die.

Come to the mother's loom.

"Have you any other children besides
these?"

"I have had eight. I have six alive."

"Did we see any of them, just now, at
the—-"

"Ragged School? O yes! You saw four
of mine at the Ragged School!"

She looks up, quite bright about it—has a
mother's pride in it—is not ashamed of the
name: she, working for her bread, not
begging it—not in the least.

She has stopped her loom for the moment.
So has her husband. So has the young man.

"Weaver's children are born in the
weaver's room," says the husband, with a nod
at the bedstead. "Nursed there, brought
up there—sick or well—and die there."

To which, the clash and jar of all three
looms—the wife's, the husband's, and the
young man's, as they go again—make a chorus.

"This man's work, now, Mr. Broadelle—
he can't hear us apart here, in this noise?—"

"Oh, no!"

—"requires but little skill?"

"Very little skill. He is doing now,
exactly what his grandfather did. Nothing
would induce him to use a simple improvement
(the ' fly shuttle ') to prevent that
contraction of the chest of which he complains.
Nothing would turn him aside from his old
ways. It is the old custom to work at home,
in a crowded room, instead of in a factory. I
couldn't change it, if I were to try."

Good Heaven, is the house falling! Is
there an earthquake in Spitalfields! Has a
volcano burst out in the heart of London!
What is this appalling rush and tremble?

It is only the railroad.

The arches of the railroad span the house;
the wires of the electric telegraph stretch
over the confined scene of his daily life; the
engines fly past him on their errands, and
outstrip the birds; and what can the man of
prejudice and usage hope for, but to be
overthrown and flung into oblivion! Look to
it, gentlemen of precedent and custom