now. And then there is always some cottage property in the hands of
agents.

Leaving Heatley Street, we went to a place called "Seed's Yard."
Here we called upon a clean old stately widow, with a calm, sad
face. She had been long known, and highly respected, in a good
street, not far off, where she had lived for twenty-four years, in
fair circumstances, until lately. She had always owned a good
houseful of furniture; but, after making bitter meals upon the
gradual wreck of it, she had been compelled to break up that house,
and retire with her five children to lodge with a lone widow in this
little cot, not over three yards square, in "Seed's Yard," one of
those dark corners into which decent poverty is so often found now,
creeping unwillingly away from the public eye, in the hope of
weathering the storm of adversity, in penurious independence. The
old woman never would accept relief from the parish, although the
whole family had been out of work for many months. One of the
daughters, a clean, intelligent-looking young woman, about eighteen,
sat at the table, eating a little bread and treacle to a cup of
light-coloured tea, when we went in; but she blushed, and left off
until we had gone--which was not long after. It felt almost like
sacrilege to peer thus into the privacies of such people; but I hope
they did not feel as if it had been done offensively. We called next
at the cottage of a hand-loom weaver--a poor trade now in the best
of times--a very poor trade--since the days when tattered old "Jem
Ceawp" sung his pathetic song of "Jone o' Greenfeelt"--

"Aw'm a poor cotton weighver, as ony one knows;
We'n no meight i'th heawse, an' we'n worn eawt er clothes;
We'n live't upo nettles, while nettles were good;