perhaps one will stop a little, and another will
stop a little, and take his threepennorth at the
bar or what not, depending on when it is or
which it might be, wot you understand; but
this 'ere being Saturday night, they will go the
sooner, the 'ouse being closed at twelve."

"And why is it called a 'Lead'?"

"Well, don't you see that this pore man
being but a pore man—a factory worker, a clock-
maker, or what not—this is got up for to hease
him," was the triumphant reply.

"Yes, I see that, out why 'Lead'? I don't
see what it means."

"Why just you look 'ere, sir," says the
treasurer, leaning over the table, and gesticulating
demonstratively with his hands: smiling the
while in patient pity—"just look 'ere: it means
what I have just been explaining. Here is a
pore man—being a factory worker, a clockmaker,
or what not—he comes to one of his friends, as
it might be you or me——"

Thrown back on his own resources for the
means of discovering the derivation of this
word "Lead," your Eye-witness could only
conclude that it derived its origin from the fact
that those who get the thing up take the lead in
helping the indigent person, or lead the way in
the matter of his relief.

The case to which this mode of relief was
applied at the White Horse Tavern, was a
peculiarly distressing one. A young girl, sixteen or
seventeen years old, had committed suicide
in a paroxysm of jealousy. It seemed that she
and a lad of about her own age had been
brought up almost always together, had been
playmates and constant associates. An attachment
had sprung up between them, and it was
simply because she had seen this youngster
in conversation with some other girl, that she
determined to destroy herself: a resolution which
she carried out by swallowing a quantity of a
certain deadly acid used by her father in his
trade. This case may remind the reader of
one reported in the daily papers not long ago,
in which a girl destroyed herself by jumping
down the shaft of a disused mine, having
merely seen her lover talking to a woman
of whom she felt jealous. It is impossible to
say whether the one tragedy, or rather the
account of it which appeared in the newspapers,
may have had any share in producing the other;
it is far from impossible. One thing is quite
certain: that such a suicide is often attributable
to the thought of the effect it will produce on
the person whose misconduct, real or supposed,
has led to it: "He will hear of it, it will make
him miserable—he will know at last how fond I
was of him!"

We hardly know what persons of this class
suffer, and how helpless they are under a great
affliction. What do they know of the healing
effects of time? They see no way out of the
difficulty. They are miserable now, and that
they will always be so is their present conviction.
The balance is upset, they are puzzled,
the small domain of thought—a narrow region
with them—is rent by this moral earthquake:
"There is one remedy for all," says the bad voice
within—and they take it.

The father of the unhappy girl in question in
this instance, was present at this "Lead," and
betrayed an interest of no common order in the
contents of the soup-plates, in which the contributions
of the visitors were collected. This personage
was the hero of the evening. There is no one
well acquainted with the lower classes of our
countrymen who has not observed how their
importance among their own circle of acquaintances
is increased by a death. They regard their
affliction, with a sense of proprietorship, and
look upon it as highly creditable to the family
generally. There is in this class some small
entertainment of this feeling when any misfortune
gives them a temporary prominence, but
still a death is the great card of all. What a
property a corpse is to them—and a funeral what
a glory!

Such boy and girl attachments as this which
had ended so terribly are extremely common
among these factory workers, and others of the
same order. Indeed, it was curious to observe
the large number of young boys who were
present on the occasion of this "Lead," and to
notice the prominent part taken by these mere
children, as well as the readiness of their seniors
to give way to them. Is this a characteristic
of our day? The old men seem almost afraid of
the youngsters, who awe and surprise them into
submission by their blasé, knowing airs. These
little men and their sweethearts were to be seen
in all parts of the room, and were smoking their
pipes and drinking their beer with great gravity
and importance; but such early and precocious
beginnings are not favourable to the structural
development of these boys, and they so rarely
attain to any size that it seems as if Nature had
determined to punish them for their presumption,
and had decreed that since these small
creatures had offended her by pretending that
they were grown up, they should be made to take
the consequences, and should find that at least,
in the one respect of having "done growing,"
they should be men to their hearts' content.

Nor is this precocity of the youth of both
sexes in this peculiar locality and grade of life
at all surprising to those who have observed
the early introduction of children and babies
"into society," which prevails among our labouring
classes. A baby has no sooner been carried
across the parental threshold than it finds its
way into the public, the penny gaff, the theatre
gallery. Among the numerous babies present
at the Friendly Lead, there was every
indication of a nascent and damning tendency to
conviviality. To get down upon the floor among
the feet of the company and grub in the
sawdust of a spittoon, to sit upon the edge of a
Windsor chair gnawing a pettitoe—vendors of
this delicacy pervaded the apartment throughout
the evening—or to produce a partial nose eclipse
by secreting of the tip of that feature in the
bowl of a tobacco-pipe,—is the nursery play of
your Bethnal-green baby.

"Nothing," said the mother of one of these