ng that
house, a stranger would never dream that the family was living on an
average income of less than sixpence a head per week. But I know how
hard some decent folk will struggle with the bitterest poverty
before they will give in to it. The old man came in whilst I was
there. He sat down in one corner, quietly tinkering away at
something he had in his hands. His old corduroy trousers were well
patched, and just new washed. He had very little to say to us,
except that "He could like to get summat to do; for he wur tired o'
walkin' abeawt." Another case was that of a poor widow woman, with
five young children. This family had been driven from house to
house, by increasing necessity, till they had sunk at last into a
dingy little hovel, up a dark court, in one of the poorest parts of
the town, where they huddled together about a fireless grate to keep
one another warm. They had nothing left of the wreck of their home
but two rickety chairs, and a little deal table reared against the
wall, because one of the legs was gone. In this miserable hole--
which I saw afterwards--her husband died of sheer starvation, as was
declared by the jury on the inquest. The dark, damp hovel where they
had crept to was scarcely four yards square; and the poor woman
pointed to one corner of the floor, saying, "He dee'd i' that nook."
He died there, with nothing to lie upon but the ground, and nothing
to cover him, in that fireless hovel. His wife and children crept
about him, there, to watch him die; and to keep him as warm as they
could. When the relief committee first found this family out, the
entire clothing of the family of seven persons weighed eight pounds,
and sold for fivepence, as rags. I saw the family afterwards, at
their poor place; and will say more about them hereafter. He told me
of many other cases of a similar kind. But, after agreeing to a time
when we should visit them personally, we set out together to see the
"Stone Yard," where there are many factory hands at work under the
Board of Guardians.

The "Stone Yard" is close by the Preston and Lancaster Canal. Here
there are from one hundred and seventy to one hundred and eighty,
principally young men, employed in breaking, weighing, and wheeling
stone, for road mending. The stones are of a hard kind of blue
boulder, gathered from the land between Kendal and Lancaster. The
"Labour Master" told me that there were thousands of tons of these
boulders upon the land between K