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population by the war, while our Eastern States seem likely to lose very many inhabitants. A great emigration is going on.
And we have little work for the people. All the factory districts are almost at a standstill, even in the populous and lately flourishing country about Worcester. Cotton begins to arrive from India to supply what little demand there is for it. Yet it is poor stuff, and will be abandoned when a supply shall be again obtained from the South. I notice that Beverly has lost not a few of its citizens by the war. Indeed, all Essex County, in which the people are mostly out of employ, has poured out its strength in thousands of men. Among other towns, Marblehead has, I think, sent away more than half its whole male popula- tion. The number who go must constantly increase till the war ends, since men will prefer fighting to starving. . . ,
A simple question lately presented to me suggested an answer which twenty years ago would have seemed to carry little force. A near relative, brought up amidst all the comforts of life and among educated persons, but who married in New York a poor Irish physician of but mid- dling morality, now lives reduced (he being dead after hav- ing spent her fortune) to extreme poverty, and in great measure dependent on her relatives for support. Being visited lately, she did not so much complain of poverty as of the shortness of the lessons which her boy was made to recite at the. public school, and at this she shed tears, bewailing it as a great disaster, and thus illustrating the passion for education which ever exists in the descendants of educated families.
In thinking over what advice was best to be given, I asked myself whether my own happiness had been in- creased by an education which began I cannot remember
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