“Well, then,” I rejoined, “you have the less cause for anxiety. Children are uncertain blessings, though certain cares: and depend upon it, you are much better off than many parents who have them.”
“That is very true,” replied the woman; “but still a child or two would be a great comfort to us in our old age.”
Their next-door neighbours had four noisy children and the same weekly wages. Here I was told by the parents, who were also at a tea breakfast, that their childless neighbours were far better off than they, as they had comforts beyond their own reach. “We can’t drink no beer,” said the man—(this was a lie, by the way, for he spent a shilling every week in the jerry-shop, to the real discomfort of his family), “nor eat no good wittals, nor have nothing comfortable.”
In short, in every house into which I went there was something wanting to constitute comfort.
In the dwelling of an artizan it was the want of a hot joint and a pudding on Sundays, or the substitution of an occasional dish of potatoes for bread or meat; and sometimes it was the house itself which was uncomfortable from some cause or other. One or two of the very poorest families which I visited were disposed to think they would have comforts in the Union house which they could not afford under their own roofs, although those who were within that establishment declared that they had no comforts at all.
An old woman in one of the cottages complained to me that John Snook had stolen one of her geese when it was just ready for the market, and that it would be a great comfort to her if John Snook could be taken and transported.
A parish schoolmaster assured me that he had no perfect comfort except in vacation time; the boys when at school were so unruly that he had little peace or comfort except by flogging them. The boys, on the other hand, derived no comfort from being flogged.
A sick man told me that a bowl of wine whey would be of the greatest comfort to him; and a woman recovering from fever, whose bed linen had been just changed, spoke within my hearing to her sister of the comfort which she felt in consequence.
I hired a brickmaker in the course of that tour, and set off with him for Ireland. When I reached Liverpool, a steamer was about to leave for Wexford. Into this I entered. The steward showed me a comfortable berth, in which I was dreadfully sick during a passage of twenty hours, loathing the sight and smell of food; yet he often came to ask me if there was any little comfort in the way of meat and drink that he could supply.
A few days after I had reached home, I went into the cottages of my own workpeople, and there the distinction between them and those of the corresponding class in England in their estimate of what is comfortable, struck me very forcibly.