, though what deepened their anxieties was that
they looked for the coming of a second child. Mrs. George would not
run up bills that she did not have money to meet. She parted with her
little pieces of jewellery and smaller trinkets one by one, until only
her wedding ring had not been pawned. And then she told the milkman
that she could no longer afford to take milk, but he offered to
continue to supply it for printed cards, which she accepted. Mr.
George's diary is blank just here, but at another time he said:[2]

"I came near starving to death, and at one time I was so close to it
that I think I should have done so but for the job of printing a few
cards which enabled us to buy a little cornmeal. In this darkest time
in my life my second child was born."

The baby came at seven o'clock in the morning of January 27, 1865.
When it was born the wife heard the doctor say: "Don't stop to wash the
child; he is starving. Feed him!" After the doctor had gone and
mother and baby had fallen asleep, the husband left them alone in the
house, and taking the elder child to a neighbour's, himself went to his
business in a desperate state of mind, for his wife's condition made
money--some money--an absolute and immediate necessity. But nothing
came into the office and he did not know where to borrow. What then
happened he told sixteen years subsequently.

"I walked along the street and made up my mind to get money from the
first man whose appearance might indicate that he had it to give. I
stopped a man--a stranger--and told him I wanted $5. He asked what I
wanted it for. I told him that my wife was confined and that I had
nothing to give her to eat. He gave me the money. If he had not, I
think I was desperate enough to have killed him." [3]

The diary notes commence again twenty days after the new baby's birth
and show that the struggle for subsistence was still continuing, that
Henry George abandoned the job-printing office, and that he and his
wife and babies had moved into a smaller house where he had to pay a
rent of only nine dollars a month--just half of his former rent. This
diary consists simply of two half-sheets of white note paper, folded
twice and pinned in the middle, forming two small neat books of eight
pages each of about the size of a visiting card. The writing is very
small, but clear.

"_February 17, 1865 (Friday)_ 10:40 P.M.--Gave I. Trump this day bill
of sale for my interest in office,