plain ones along the street!” She never exceeds sixpence in her charges for these pen-wipers, and most of them are fourpence. The only sixpenny ones are scarlet cloth, with white mice “couchant,” and made of white plush. She tells me she finds these more expensive than the others to make up. I have seen them sold at the bazaars for one shilling and sixpence. This poor woman has lived on the sale of her pin-cushions for the last ten or twelve years.
I have endeavoured, to the best of my ability in this little space of matter, to give a faithful sketch of our industrious, struggling London poor in the homes with which I am familiar. There are dens of misery and crime in the heart of the City, and on the opposite side of the Thames, which I admit to be beyond my ken. In these dens are men and women and children, viler than the animals they drive, where each day and night that rises and falls on their wretched existence is fraught with deeper and blacker crime and terror than in the times of Pagan darkness, before the light of Christianity was diffused throughout our island home. I know that among us there are helpers for their miserable condition, such as City Missionaries, and a band of women whom we may find in every nook and corner of the earth, and who seek their happiness in rooting out sin and sorrow from among the lowest and most degraded classes of the London poor. Of these poor I know but very little. Occasionally a few of them come to settle in our district, and they are the curse of their more respectable neighbours. Their manner of life and occupations being such, I am doubtful whether they would appreciate our efforts to clothe their children.
I have tried my system, and found it successful in my own place. The poor are grateful for benefits if rightly dealt out, and in London they are keenly susceptible of kindness shown them by their betters. But they are totally a different race of beings to the country poor. The latter take the tone and opinions of their lords and masters, and live more narrowly, in a moral sense, than the Londoners, who depend for subsistence wholly upon the works of their own hands and the exercise of their own wits, amenable only to the bad or good luck of the times.
They are not the sorry slaves of local prejudices and local interests, they are men and women of the earth alone, in the rough or smooth walks of existence, just according as they may chance to be placed. For my own part, I would rather deal with them than the country folk, though the work of a London district is far more difficult than that of a country parish. “Human nature is the same everywhere,” people will say, but there is much to combat with in our visiting; and when the fight is over, and the day’s work done, the reflection that a handful of good seed has been sown, and is likely to produce a good return, amply repays the toil and moil a visitor may be obliged to go through all the year round. The blessing of the poor is always desirable; and I am convinced every English girl, whether she be the blue-veined daughter of our Belgravian homes, or the simple gentlewoman in a humbler neighbourhood, like our own, would be proud and happy to call down such a blessing on her own head as I have heard bestowed by poor mothers on those who have cheered and amused the little sick children by a few trifles saved out of a nursery toy stock, and clothed others as well by the work of their own hands.
Abler pens than mine have written, and will write, I have little doubt, on the condition of the London poor. My paper is but a simple effort of my own to invite the attention of my sex to the cause I have at heart—united labour at home every day on their behalf: and if any one of my readers resents the idea of turning sempstress on their account, I would only remind her that none of us were ever born for our own pride and enjoyment, or for ourselves at all. We were all born to work through life, and our industry should be devoted to the service of one who in the next life will demand a return of our labour; and if we clothe the children of our poor, we do good, not only to the least of his little ones, but unto Him—the one Master of both them and us.
THE HAKE.
The peculiar-looking fish which forms the subject of this short article belongs to the same family as the cod, viz., the order known to naturalists as “Gadidæ.” The hake is pretty abundant on the British coasts, but does not enter very largely into the supply of fish sent to the metropolitan markets, the majority of hake taken being consumed in sea-port and provincial towns. In appearance this fish resembles an attenuated cod-fish, but is more lengthy than the latter, and never exhibits the plump and fleshy “embonpoint,” if I may so term it, which forms so tempting a characteristic of the cod. Large quantities of hake are taken on the Yorkshire coast, and, indeed, all round the British Isles; but perhaps these fish are best known to the inhabitants of Cornwall and Devon, and to the fishermen of the Orkneys and Hebrides. In
