We find this among that large section of the middle class represented by persons holding inferior clerkships, small official appointments, and situations where the salaries are only sufficient to yield a bare subsistence, and there is little or no probability of their improvement, because, among the number of candidates who are eager to fill such positions, there exists a degree of distress not easily estimated, even by the appearance of those who are the sufferers. Of course, relief cannot reach such people through the poor-law, or by any direct legislation. They are far above the reach of almsgiving, or even of societies for distributing bread and coals. They have a just pride in maintaining a position of independence; and though they may sometimes look with a feeling too near to envy at the more prosperous mechanic or the skilled artisan, who can earn "good wages," dress in fustian or corduroy, send his children to the Board School, and regulate working hours and weekly pay by the rules of a Trade Union, they mostly keep bravely on, hoping that as the children grow up, they may get the boys "into something," and find some friend to help them to place the girls in situations where they may partly earn their own living. With rent and taxes often absorbing a fourth part of his entire income, with market cliques combining against him to keep up the prices of food, with dear bread, dear potatoes, boots and shoes always wearing out, and respectability demanding cloth clothes, even though they {152} be made of "shoddy," how is the clerk, the employé, the small tradesman, the struggling professional man, to follow the prudent counsel which wealthier people are always ready to bestow upon him—and "lay by for a rainy day?" Rainy day! why his social climate may be said to represent a continual downpour, so far as the necessity for pecuniary provision. He lives (so to speak) with an umbrella always up, and it is only a poor shift of a gingham after all. The half-crown which is in his pocket to-night is already bespoken for to-morrow's dinner. As he listens to the account of the week's marketing, and knows that his wife and children have been living for three days out of seven upon little better than bread and dripping, he feels like an ogre as he thinks of the sevenpenny plate of meat that he consumed at one o'clock, because it was only "a makeshift" at home. How is he to pay even the smallest premium to insure his life, when he is obliged to meet ordinary emergencies by a visit to the pawnbroker after dark?