THE POORER CLASSES.
A few days later I visited some different classes of poor people—namely, the wicked and the idle; they who had fallen into want through their own improvidence, but who had now raised themselves again; and the estimable, who had honorably combated with unavoidable poverty. In one certain quarter of Liverpool it is that the first class is especially met with. Of this class of poor, in their wretched rooms, with their low, brutalized expression, I will not speak; companion-pieces to this misery may be met with every where. Most of those whom I saw were Irish. It was a Sunday noon, after divine service. The ale-houses were already open in this part of the town, and young girls and men might be seen talking together before them, or sitting upon the steps.
Of the second class I call to mind, with especial pleasure, one little household. It was a mother and her son. Her means of support, a mangle, stood in the little room in which she had lived since she had raised herself up again. It was dinner-time. A table, neatly covered for two persons, stood in the room, and upon the iron stand before the fire was placed a dish of mashed potatoes, nicely browned, ready to be set on the table. The mother was waiting for her son, and the dinner was waiting for him. He was the organ-blower in the church during divine service, and he returned while I was still there. He was well dressed, but was a little, weakly man, and squinted; the mother's eyes, however, regarded him with love. This son was her only one, and her all. And he, to whom mother Nature had acted as a step-mother, had a noble mother's heart to warm himself with, which prepared for him an excellent home, a well-covered table, and a comfortable bed. That poor little home was not without its wealth.
As belonging to the third and highest class, I must mention two families, both of them shoe-makers, and both of them inhabiting cellars. The one family consisted of old, the other of young people. The old shoemaker had to maintain his wife, who was lame and sick, from a fall in the street, and a daughter. The young one had a young wife, and five little children to provide for; but work was scanty and the mouths many. At this house, also, it was dinner-time, and I saw upon the table nothing but potatoes. The children were clean, and had remarkably agreeable faces; but—they were pale; so was also the father of the family. The young and pretty, but very pale mother said, "Since I have come into this room I have never been well, and this I know—I shall not live long?" Her eyes filled with tears; and it was plain enough to see that this really delicate constitution could not long sustain the effects of the cold damp room, into which no sunbeam entered. These two families, of the same trade, and alike poor, had become friends in need. When one of the fathers of the family wanted work, and was informed by the Home-missionary who visited them that the other had it, the intelligence seemed a consolation to him. Gladdening sight of human sympathy, which keeps the head erect and the heart sound under the depressing struggle against competition! But little gladdening to me would have been the sight of these families in their cellar-homes, had I not at the same time been aware of the increase of those "Model Lodging-houses," which may be met with in many parts of England, and which will remove these inhabitants of cellars, they who sit in darkness, into the blessing of the light of life—which will provide worthy dwellings for worthy people.