The company consisted of an old man, two young men, and three young women. Two of the women had children in their arms. After I had listened to them a little while, thinking the time and the words a little appropriate to their condition, I beckoned to one of the young men, who came "sidling" slowly up to me. I asked him where they came from, and he said, "Ash'n." In answer to another question, he said, "We're o' one family. Me an' yon tother's wed. That's his wife wi' th' chylt in her arms, an' hur wi' th' plod shawl on's mine." I asked if the old man was his father. "Ay," replied he, "we're o' here, nobbut two. My mother's ill i' bed, an' one o' my sisters is lookin' after her." " Well, an' heaw han yo getten on?" said I. "Oh, we'n done weel; but we's come no moor," replied he. Another day, there was an instrumental band of these operatives playing sacred music close to the Exchange lamp. Amongst the crowd around, I met with a friend of mine. He told me that the players were from Staleybridge. They played some fine old tunes, by desire, and, among the rest, they played one called "Warrington. "When they had played it several times over, my friend turned to me and said, "That tune was composed by a Rev. Mr Harrison, who was once minister of Cross Street Unitarian Chapel, in Manchester; and, one day, an old weaver, who had come down from the hills, many miles, staff in hand, knocked at the minister's door, and asked if there was 'a gentleman co'de' Harrison lived theer?' 'Yes.' 'Could aw see him?' 'Yes.' When the minister came to the door, the old weaver looked hard at him, for a minute, and said, 'Are yo th' mon 'at composed that tune co'de Worrington?' 'Yes,' replied the minister, 'I believe I am.' 'Well,' said the old weaver, 'give me your hond! It's a good un!' He then shook hands with him heartily again, and saying, 'Well, good day to yo,' he went his way home again, before the old minister could fairly collect his scattered thoughts."

I do not know how it is that these workless minstrels are gradually becoming rarer upon the streets than they were a few months ago. Perhaps it is because the unemployed are more liberally relieved now than they were at first. I know that now many who have concealed their starving condition are ferreted out and relieved as far as possible. Many of these street wanderers have gone home again disgusted, to pinch out the hard time in proud obscurity; and there are some, no doubt, who have wandered away to other parts of England. Of these last, we may naturally expect that a few may become so reconciled to a life of wandering minstrelsy that they may probably never return to settled labour again. But "there's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." Let us trust that the Great Creator may comfort and relieve them, "according to their several necessities, giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of all their afflictions."

LETTER AND SPEECHES UPON THE COTTON FAMINE

LETTERS OF A LANCASHIRE LAD ON THE COTTON FAMINE.

The following extracts are from the letters of Mr. John Whittaker, "A Lancashire Lad," one of the first writers whose appeals through the press drew serious attention to the great distress in Lancashire during the Cotton Famine. There is no doubt that his letters in The Times, and to the Lord Mayor of London, led to the Mansion House Fund. In The Times of April 14, 1862, appeared the first of a series of letters, pleading the cause of the distressed operatives. He said:-

"I am living in the centre of a vast district where there are many cotton mills, which in ordinary times afford employment to many thousands of 'hands,' and food to many more thousands of mouths. With rare exceptions, quietness reigns at all those mills. . . . It may be that our material atmosphere is somewhat brighter than it was, but our social atmosphere is much darker and denser. Hard times have come; and we have had them sufficiently long to know what they mean. We have fathers sitting in the house at mid-day, silent and glum, while children look wistfully about, and sometimes whimper for bread which they cannot have. We have the same fathers who, before hard times came, were proud men, who would have thought 'beggar' the most opprobrious epithet you could have hit them with; but who now are made humble by the sight of wife and children almost starving, and who go before 'relief committees,' and submit to be questioned about their wants with a patience and humility which it is painful, almost schocking, to witness, And some others of these fathers turn out in the morning with long besoms as street-sweepers, while others again go to breaking stones in the town's yard or open road-side, where they are unprotected from the keen east winds, which add a little more to the burden of misery which they have to bear just now. But, harder even than this, our factory-women and girls have had to turn out; and, plodding a weary way from door to door, beg a bit of bread or a stray copper, that they may eke out the scanty supply at home. Only the other day, while taking a long stroll in the country lying about the town in which I live, I met a few of these factory-girls, and was stopped by their not very beggar-like question of 'Con yo help us a bit?' They were just such as my own sisters; and as I saw and heard them, I was almost choked as I fancied my sisters come to such a pass as that. 'Con yo help us a bit?' asked these factory girls.

. . . I have heard of ladies whose whole lives seem to be but a changing from one kind of pleasure to another; who suffer chiefly from what they call ennui, (a kind of disease from which my sisters are not likely to suffer at all,) and to whom a new pleasure to enjoy would be something like what a new world to conquer would be to Alexander. Why should they not hear our Lancashire girls' cry of 'Con yo help us a bit?' Why should not they be reminded that these girls in cotton gowns and wooden clogs are wending their way towards the same heaven—or, alas, towards the same hell—whither wend all the daughters of Eve, no matter what their outer condition and dress? Why should not they be asked to think how these striving girls have to pray daily, 'Lead us not into temptation,' while temptations innumerable stand everywhere about them?

Those of us who are men would rather do much than let our sisters go begging. May not some of us take to doing more to prevent it? I remember some poetry about the

'Sister bloodhounds, Want and Sin,'

and know that they hunt oftener together than singly. We have felt the fangs of the first: upon how many of us will the second pounce?"