Three years before one of her neighbours, a working woman, had had an attack of paralysis. This neighbour was poor, old, without relatives and no one would bother with her. The poor little charwoman, encumbered with a drunken husband and six children, agreed to take care of the paralytic and her home if the other neighbours would be willing to provide the bare necessities of life. She succeeded in overcoming the selfishness of each and every one in the warmth of her kindness. From that time on she never ceased in the rare hours when she was free to look after the paralytic. She attended to the housework, the cooking, the washing. The neighbour’s condition grew worse. The case was one of complete paralysis. The assistance which she had to give to this half-dead woman was often of the most repulsive kind. Always smiling, always tidy, always cheerful, she gave to the human hulk she had taken under her protection the most thorough and intelligent care. My little charwoman had always, at all times, been cheerful. I wondered what kind of gaiety she would exhibit when at last the paralytic’s death should free her from the load with which she had benevolently burdened her life. This morning, the morning on which she came late, she was crying. She wept warm tears. I supposed that my reproach had caused this tearful outpouring. But not at all. She said to me between sobs: “I am crying--crying--because--she’s dead--the poor woman.” It was her neighbour the paralytic for whom she wept. In the north of Ireland I once saw some children barefooted in the snow, during an intensely cold February. With some friends I visited the poor quarter of a provincial city, where, I was told, people working in the mills lived twelve or even more in cabins containing but two rooms. We placed no especial credence in these stories and we decided to look into the matter for ourselves. It was all true, nevertheless. In some cases the conditions were even worse. On reaching the district in question we noticed that a little boy had followed our carriage. At a trot sharp enough to run his little legs off he continued for about a mile and a half, all in the hope of getting twopence. The small boy came forward to open the door of our carriage. The coachman rebuked him brutally. The child had so odd an expression that I began to talk to him. He had five brothers and sisters. He did the best he could to pick up something in the streets, and he made from sixpence to eightpence a day. Just at present he was trying to get a little money to buy some coal for his mother. I, doubting the truth of these statements, made him take me to his hut, which he had pointed out to us. “That is where I live, madam.” Certainly there was no coal in the house, but there were three sick people. The father swept snow in the streets to make a few pennies, for in this cold weather the mill where he worked was not running.