Hospital for my youngest son, M. N.? I have nine children,
and no means to educate them. I ventured to address you,
believing that my husband's name is not unknown to you as
an artist.

Believe me to remain faithfully yours,
* * *

120. Now this letter is only a typical example of the entire class of
those which, being a governor of Christ's Hospital, I receive, in
common with all the other governors, at the rate of about three a day,
for a month or six weeks from the date of our names appearing in the
printed list of the governors who have presentations for the current
year. Having been a governor now some twenty-five years, I have
documentary evidence enough to found some general statistics upon;
from which there have resulted two impressions on my mind, which I
wish here specially to note to you, and I do not doubt but that all
the other governors, if you could ask them, would at once confirm what
I say. My first impression is, a heavy and sorrowful sense of the
general feebleness of intellect of that portion of the British public
which stands in need of presentations to Christ's Hospital. This
feebleness of intellect is mainly shown in the nearly total
unconsciousness of the writers that anybody else may want a
presentation, besides themselves. With the exception here and there
of a soldier's or a sailor's widow, hardly one of them seems to have
perceived the existence of any distress in the world but their own:
none know what they are asking for, or imagine, unless as a remote
contingency, the possibility of its having been promised at a prior
date. The second most distinct impression on my mind, is that the
portion of the British public which is in need of presentations to
Christ's Hospital considers it a merit to have large families, with or
without the means of supporting them!

121. Now it happened also (and remember, all this is strictly true,
nor in the slightest particular represented otherwise than as it
chanced; though the said chance brought thus together exactly the
evidence I wanted for my letter to you)--it happened, I say, that on
this same morning of the 10th April, I became accidentally acquainted
with a case of quite a different kind: that of a noble girl, who,
engaged at sixteen, and having received several advantageous offers
since, has remained for ten years faithful to her equally faithful
lover; whil