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?"

In a second letter, inserted in The Times of April 22, 1862, the
same writer says:--"Even during the short time which has elapsed