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