a drunkard; she buried him three years ago, and from that hour she seemed to alter her very nature. Before that, she used to go about the country to beg, carrying all the children with her; and, when far away from home, would sleep in outhouses and barns. With the little money she gathered in this way, she bought wood and other necessaries for the winter, mending up the rags she had begged, and preparing for a traipse in the summer, may be with an additional child on her arm. As soon as Christie Kelley died, she bought a broom, the first ever seen in her house, swept the two rooms of her shanty clean,—pulled out an old leather glove from her huge pocket, and counted out fifty dollars in notes and silver. 'Now, Mrs. M'Curdy,' said she, 'you're a sensible woman; sit down by me and tell me how I had best lay out all this money. I kept it unknown to poor Christie, and a little more too—how else could he have been buried so decently?' In a little time, sir, with her prudence in laying out this money, her cabin got to look as well as mine, barring that six ailing children will make a litter and some noise."
"How does she maintain herself, if work is so scarce, and what is the matter with her children?"
"How does she maintain herself? why, in the strangest way you ever heard of. She does every thing and any thing. In the morning she finds out which of the children are likeliest to be the sickest through the day; these she carries with her, for she is a powerful, strong woman; and into a house she goes, seats the children in an obscure corner, and falls to work—nothing comes amiss. If it is washing day, she is up to her elbows in the suds before the lady of the house is up, and nothing but a constable will force her out till she has done two women's work, has eaten three hearty meals, and fed the ailing children with such little scraps as
