was only at Killarney "—she was half sobbing
at the thought, and rubbing her eyes furtively
from time to time with the corner of a baby's
petticoat that hung beside her face. A little
girl slipped in quietly, her feet covered with
snow, and her mother, in reply to an inquiry,
said, "Yes, she was a good girl, and had just
come from the ragged school. The frock she
was then wearing had been given to her
there."

The poor little thing had slipped to the
cupboard in search of her evening meal, and
was peering about it like a hungry kitten.

"It's of no use, Kitty," said her mother,
with another rub against the little petticoat,
"there's nothing for you."

The supperless child slipped to the fire
without a syllable or gesture of complaint, and
bent for warmth over the few ashes that were
burning in it.

"Ah," said the mother again, "we little
thought at Killarney of a place like this. It's
fit to kill one only to see the sufferings of that
poor soul over the way." This was the same
neighbour for whom she had pleaded once
before, and anxious to engage our sympathy
in her behalf, she led us to her room.

"Excuse me for not opening the door to
you," said the woman as we entered. " The
baby is in my arms, and it is so sick." Her
voice died away in a note of the most plaintive
tenderness. The poor mother sat with
the baby in her lap on one of the two chairs
that the room contained: there was a sick
boy in the other. Five more children cowered
round the grate. The baby had been
ill, we found, and had been left for a short
time on the previous Sunday, while the
mother was at church, in charge of the eldest
son, the sick boy whom we saw. He, liable
to fits, had been seized with one during that
time, fallen with the infant, and so bruised its
cheek. Slight injuries produce great wounds
on bodies ill-fed and ill-housed; the
consequence of the fall was, that a large abscess
formed where, in a healthy child, there would
have been only a discoloured skin.

"And the boy's foot is bound up?"

"Yes; badly cut. The real truth is, sir,
we were forced to part with his shoes, and
whether it was ice or broken glass thrown
in the road, I don't know, but he came home
with a sad wound, and can't go out of doors
for some weeks, I'm afraid."

Inquiry was made as to her means of
subsistence. "We have had nothing coming in,''
she said; "but the baker has not let us
starve. He knows we will pay him when we
can, and he has trusted us; but yesterday
when I went he had no bread to give us,
because the rioters had been to his shop and
taken all there was in it — so we have had
nothing since that."

Mrs. Sullivan, who had followed us into
the room, and watched her neighbour with
the strongest interest, here broke out into
loud denunciations of the ruffians who, in the
name of distress, rob the starving. "It's
always the honest poor," she said, " who suffer
by those noisy blackguards." The sick baby
uttered a low wail. There were four coloured
Scripture prints over the mantelpiece of this
room: upon one of them was the Great
Physician. It is not wonderful that in the day
of want, though coats and shoes were sold,
those prints were kept.

The charitable trust of the baker for which
this woman had been grateful was limited by
his own poverty and the extent of the distress
appealing to his sympathies. When last she
had been seen eating, we learnt after we had
left her — for herself, her husband, and her
seven children, the whole dinner had been
two halfpenny loaves.

This household clung to Scripture prints.
Almost in all the cold, dismantled rooms we
saw, there was some one thing saved to the
last which might have been among the first
and easiest for any man without a heart to
lose. One little family had saved the birds
belonging to the children—but there remained
only the empty cages, for the birds were
dead. Each cage was worth a loaf of bread,
and there were two of them, but still they
hung upon the wall. A dollmaker—the
father of a troubled family— had been
accustomed to find solace in a fiddle. He took to
fiddling, as some others take to drink, but his
little vice gave innocent pleasure to his
children, while it soothed himself and helped him
to endure the buffetings of fortune. Tables
and chairs were bartered, one by one, for
bread, and still the fiddle, strong consoler,
was retained. The charm of its music helped
a hungry family to nestle together of evenings,
freed from the sharp consciousness of want.
At last, the evil day could be put off no
longer, and even the dollmaker's fiddle was
exchanged for bread, to the great grief, not
only of himself and of his family, but also
of his neighbours.

For although many of these suffering people,
tortured by hunger, become selfish in urging
their demands for bread, and jealous of those
whose sorrows are assuaged in preference to
theirs; though very many others are attracted
by the light and warmth of the gin-palace,
and the short exemption from grief to be
purchased at its bar; though cursing is to be
heard here every day near the church door,
and there is one curse uttered elsewhere by
the self-righteous that falls heavily here, as in
all places, on the child of the poor man — "He
shall die without instruction; and in the
greatness of his folly he shall go astray:" in
spite of all this evil, there is a true spirit of
good in this community of people who in good
times struggle, and in bad times starve. I
saw a woman with a kindly face able to thank
God that she had taken an orphan to her
house. "It was no loss to them," she said, "for
she had turned out a good girl, and many
were the times when they'd have wanted
bread but for the work she did." Of another