-"I
entered a house to which my attention had been directed; in the kitchen
there was not a single article of furniture--not even a live cinder on
the cold deserted-looking hearth. In the inner room I found a woman,
lately confined, lying upon a heap of chopped-up rotten straw, with
scarcely a rag to cover her; beside her nestled two children, pictures
of want, and in her bosom lay her undressed babe, that, four days
before, had first seen the light. She had no food in the house, nor had
she, nor her children, had anything since her confinement, save a little
soup procured from the public kitchen. Such was her statement; and the
evidence of her wretched dwelling bore but too ample testimony to her
melancholy tale."

Large numbers were in a state of utter destitution in the city of Cork.
As happened in other cities and important towns, the country people
flocked in to swell the misery; and roaming in groups through the
streets, exhibiting their wretchedness, and imploring relief, they gave
them a most sad and deplorable appearance. Even the houses of once
respectable tradesmen, denuded of every article of furniture, and
without fuel or bedding, presented a most affecting spectacle of want
and misery. And so impressed were the committee of the Society of
Friends in Cork with the sufferings of this class, that a separate
subscription was raised for supplying them with straw beds and some
fuel. The apparatus which this committee had erected for the making of
soup was, they thought at first, on too extensive a scale, but it was
soon found to be insufficient to meet the calls which were daily made
upon it. Their Report of the 1st of February says: "Our distribution of
soup is rapidly increasing; during the past week it averaged one
thousand and sixteen quarts a-day, and on seventh day it reached the
extent of twelve hundred and sixty-eight quarts." It went on increasing
until it had, a fortnight later, reached fourteen hundred quarts a-day.
Besides the distribution of soup by the Society of Friends, there were
four district soup houses, supplying over six-thousand quarts of soup
daily; so that, at this time, forty-eight thousand quarts of soup were
made and distributed weekly in the city of Cork. There was a nominal
charge of a penny or so a quart for some of this soup, but much of it
was given away gratuitously. Speaking of the accounts from different
parts of the county Cork, the Report says:--"Where the potato crop was
mo