looked quaint and well-preserved, like the heirlooms of a careful
cottage ancestry. The well polished fire-irons, and other metal
things, seemed to gather up the diffuse daylight and fling it back
in concentrated radiances that illuminated the shady cottage with
cheerful beauty. The little shelf of books, the gleaming window,
with its healthy pot flowers, the perfect order, and the trim
sweetness of everything, reminded me, as I have said, of the better
sort of houses where simple livers dwell, up among the free air of
the green hills--those green hills of Lancashire, the remembrance of
which will always stir my heart as long as it can stir to anything.
This cottage, in comparison with most of those which I had seen in
Scholes, looked like a glimpse of the star-lit blue peeping through
the clouds on a gloomy night. I found that it was the house of a
widower, a weaver of diaper, who was left with a family of eight
children to look after. Two little girls were in the house, and they
were humbly but cleanly clad. One of them called her father up from
the cellar, where he was working at his looms. He was a mild,
thoughtful-looking man, something past middle age. I could not help
admiring him as he stood in the middle of the floor with his
unsleeved arms folded, uttering quiet jets of simple speech to my
friend, who had known him before. He said that he hardly ever got
anything to do now, but when he was at work he could make about 7s.
2d. a week by weaving two cuts. He was receiving six tickets weekly
from the Relief Committee, which, except the proceeds of a little
employment now and then, was all that the family of nine had to
depend upon for food, firing, clothes, and rent. He said that he was
forced to make every little spin out as far as it would; but it kept
him bare and busy, and held his nose "everlastingly deawn to th'
grindlestone." But he didn't know that it was any use complaining
about a thing that neither master nor man could help. He durst say