I found the family of six living in two rooms heated by the kitchen stove. The children were ill with scarlatina. All around was the evidence of poverty, although not destitution nor degrading squalor. By observation and subsequent inquiry, I soon learned the cause of this changed condition. It was simply this--Mary, who had gradually adapted herself with grace and intelligence to the comforts of the rich house in which she had lived from her fifteenth to her twenty-fourth year, could not now conform herself to the smaller means and ways of living of a wife and mother in moderate circumstances. She had learned to cook delicate, expensive viands, had a sure belief that tenderloin is the only steak fit for eating, and had great skill in the pretty and dainty ornamentation of the babies. These tastes which she acquired in the rich merchant’s family could not be gratified with the workman’s means; she had unlearned the thrifty habits among which she had lived as a schoolgirl in her parents’ home and she became confused in her methods of work, while the steady increase in her family reduced her in strength and added to her cares and labors, a condition not inclined to promote the good temper of the naturally amiable woman. Ofter now, the husband, returning home from his work, found no table laid for dinner, and still oftener must he start out early in the morning to find a breakfast in a neighboring eating house, which is always the first step towards finding rest and companionship in the saloon. This was the condition as it unfolded itself to me during my brief attendance. The children recovered, and with the aid of cod-liver oil and tonics provided by the charity of the dispensary, soon regained full health. A little more than a year passed when one day in October, 1876, Mary presented herself in my private consulting room. She looked haggard and pale, was poorly clad and in a desperate frame of mind. Her husband had gone from bad to worse. He paid the rent for two shabby small rooms in an old house and provided weekly the coal for the kitchen stove. All the rest of his earnings he spent for his own meals. Often, if he came home at all at night, it was in a state of partial intoxication. Naturally, no firm dared give him regular employment and he supported himself by odd jobs. The poor woman had resorted to needlework for support, this being the only means for her to earn money and look after her children, whom she could not send to school for lack of shoes and decent clothing.