version and usefulness, which will hereafter be narrated. Bugs and fleas, and other vermin, however, abound, and have tormented me sadly. I have been compelled to submit my apparel to diurnal examination. Whilst visiting at night, I have sometimes seen numbers of bugs coursing over my clothes and hat, and have had much trouble to get rid of them. The stenches have sometimes been so bad that my mouth has filled with water, and I have been compelled to retreat. There exists amongst many of the poor, an unconquerable aversion to entering a workhouse or union, and very many would submit to little short of actual starvation, rather than be shut up in those asylums, and, as they express it, "deprived of a breath of fresh air." I have found upon my district a mass of extreme poverty, such as would hardly appear credible. On visiting one family in Frying-pan Alley, I found the husband, who had long been out of work, gnawing something black, and inquired what it was; he appeared reluctant to explain, but upon my pressing the inquiry, said it was a bone he had picked off a dunghill, and charred in the fire, and was gnawing. What little fire they had consisted of cinders he had picked off a dustheap also, on his way to the chemical works at Mile End, in search of employment, where he had worked for many years. He was discharged on a reduction of hands taking place. I am not sure my eyes did not fill with tears. These people were actually starving, and had been without food for two days. I immediately gave them some money for food, which was instantly procured, and on eating it, the wind meeting the food in both parents, occasioned so much hysteric that I was really alarmed. Another poor man, known to me to be in extreme distress, was describing to me the effects of fasting for three days. "The fust day," said he, "taint so werry bad if you has a bit of bacca; the second it's horrid, it is, sich gnawing; the third day it 'taint so bad agin, you feels sinkish like, and werry faintish." This man is extremely industrious and very sober. He is a gipsey. An account of his hopeful conversion will be given in a future section. A very large amount of the temporal distress prevalent amongst the very poor, is attributable to indiscretion, or sin. The following is an instance:-A young woman, named was about eighteen years of age at the period referred to, and far from vulgar in appearance or demeanour. When first I visited her, she had an infant about six months old, and was endeavouring to support herself and child by shirt-work and shoe-binding. The poor creature was worn to the bone by hard work, starvation, and trouble. Only by extreme toil could she pay the partial rent of a room, and obtain a couple of scanty meals a day-commonly a little bread and tea. She was in respectable service at the period she fell into temptation. I saw the father of the child on one occasion; he allowed her nothing for months, and appeared heartless and vain. She was called to the door, and the poor person with whom she resided informed me by whom. I could hear the few words that passed, which led me to form the above opinion concerning him. She could not bear the shame, she said, of going before a magistrate respecting him. Her child was exceedingly fractious, and would not sleep in the day, and so hindered her in her work, that she was almost starved. She wept on several occasions, and appeared wretched. Into what awful circumstances of temptation may one false step lead us! Illustrative of this, she told me on one occasion she had been dreadfully tempted. The child, she said, was so cross she could not work much in the day, and had to sit up in the night, hungry and cold, to stitch shirts and bind shoes, or she "could not get a bit of bread at all;" and when I looked at that little thing, she said, and thought how miserable and starved I was on account of it, and if I hadn't it I might be well fed in a comfortable place as I was before, I felt, said she, horribly tempted to destroy it, and it seemed, said the poor young creature, passing her hand over her forehead, "it seemed to come so strong upon me, I was almost doing it; when one night I dreamed I had done it, and the baby was laying dead in a little coffin. I felt dreadful, and I heard a voice say-it seemed like God Thou shalt do no murder.' Well," said she, "when I woke up and found the child was not dead, and that I had not killed it, oh! how thankful I was! and I didn't have those horrid thoughts afterwards." The tears ran down the poor creature's wan cheeks, and she pressed the unconscious infant to her with anything but the embrace of a murderess, but she had, I doubt not, been dreadfully tempted. A dream is often vanity, yet there are occasions when "God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, that he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword," Job man. xxxiii. 14-18. "Some dreams are useless, moved by turbid course Of animal disorder; not so all. Deep moral lessons some impress that nought The master passion of the soul displays His huge deformity, * * Warning the sleeper to beware, awake.”* The parish would not receive her unless she affiliated her child; this she refused to do, and after enduring these manifold afflictions for a time, she became dangerously afflicted with typhus fever. Six persons, three in one room, were laid by in this small house with fever of a very malignant type. The malaria was SO strong, I was not ridded of it from my nostrils for some time after my repeated visits. One *Pollok. |
