needy, although it has been my lot to meet with sympathy and succour at
the hands of those who were much in want of both themselves."

"I believe you, Mr Stukely," answered the incumbent in a more feeling
tone. "I am not fond of theories; yet that's a theory with which I would
willingly pass through life; but it will not answer. It is knocked on
the head every hour of the day. Perhaps it is our own fault. We do not
know how to reach the hearts, and educate the feelings of the ignorant
and helpless. Just step in here."

We were standing before a hut at the base of the hill. It was a low
dirty-looking place, all roof, with a neglected garden surrounding it.
One window was in the cob-wall. It had been fixed there originally,
doubtless with the object of affording light to the inmates; but light,
not being essential to the comfort or happiness of the present tenants,
was in a great measure excluded by a number of small rags which occupied
the place of the diamond panes that had departed many months before. A
child, ill-clad, in fragments of clothes, with long and dirty hair,
unclean face, and naked feet, cried at the door, and loud talking was
heard within. Mr Fairman knocked with his knuckle before he entered, and
a gruff voice desired him to "come in." A stout fellow, with a surly
countenance and unshaven beard, was sitting over an apology for a fire,
and a female of the same age and condition was near him. She bore an
unhappy infant in her arms, whose melancholy peakish face, not
twelve-months old, looked already conscious of prevailing misery. There
was no flooring to the room, which contained no one perfect or complete
article of furniture, but symptoms of many, from the blanketless bed
down to the solitary coverless saucepan. Need I add, that the man who
sat there, the degraded father of the house, had his measure of liquor
before him, and that the means of purchasing it were never wanting,