commenced his reply from that end of the subject. He said it was true that many were worse off than he, and many were the comforts he had, that thousands of the poor knew nothing of. Here he glanced affectionately at his children; but my eyes brought him back to the bacon, and so he went on, apparently under a new impression of his resources of comfort. He said he had to sell some of his goods to buy the pig when very small, and had "_luggled_" along with some difficulty to feed and fatten him into a respectable size. Yes, he was a pretty clever pig; nor was that all--the nailing business had become better, by a half-penny a thousand, than when I was with them in the summer; and Josiah could now earn ninepence a day. He wanted to send all his children to school; if they could not read, they would be poor, even if they should come to own parks and carriages, he could not bear to see them growing up with no books in their hands. He worked long at the anvil as it was; and he was willing to work longer and harder to pay the schoolmaster for teaching his children to read. Josiah was now ten years old; he had been a faithful boy; he had made nails ever since he could hold a hammer; and it was for this that he desired the more to send him to school. It had troubled him much all along that the boy was working so long and so well at the anvil, without having any of his wages to pay the schoolmaster for teaching him something that would make him rich in his poverty when he came to be a man; and he had tried to make up this to him in a little way, by reading to him easy verses from the Testament, many of which he had learned by heart. Besides this, he had bought a little picture-reading-book, since I was with them last, and Josiah could master many easy words in it; for he had learned almost all the letters. But he knew this was a slow way of getting on, although he feared it was the best he could do for him. He knew not how he could manage to spare him for the winter. He had no other boy; there was a baby in the cradle only a fortnight old, which made him five children under ten years of age, to be fed, warmed and clothed through the winter months. Here he fell into a calculation of this kind--he could now earn nine shillings, or about two dollars and twenty cents, a week. His coal cost him three shillings a week, and his house-rent two; leaving him but _four_ shillings a week for a family of seven persons to live upon. Josiah's clothes were well nigh gone; they were indeed ragged; there was nothing left to sew patches to; and all he had in the world was on him, except a smock frock which he put on over them on the Sabbath.