Such is the life of many London home-workers, of whom some are my personal friends. But what becomes of this life? The death of aspiration. A machine-like perseverance and endurance is gradually developed; but the hope of better things dies: hope cannot exist where oxygen is absent. Then comes the desire to be let alone, and alone to die. I have met women who had become so used to the terrible conditions under which they lived that no amount of persuasion could induce them to move out of those conditions. Again I draw upon my experience. One cold day in February a young married man was charged with stealing a piece of pork. I had some conversation with him, and he told me that he was out of work, that his wife and children were starving, and that his widowed mother, who lived in the same house, was in much the same condition. He gave me their address--a poor street in Haggerston--so I visited the family. It was a terrible street even for Haggerston, but it was crowded with humanity. I found the house, and went up the rotten staircase to the first-floor back. There I found the prisoner's wife, sitting at a machine making babies' boots. In the room was an old broken perambulator, in which were two children, one asleep and the other with that everlasting deceit, a "baby's comforter," in its mouth. As the child fed on the thick air it looked at me with wondering eyes, and the mother kept on working. Presently she stopped and answered my questions. Yes, it was true her husband was out of work. He was good to her, and a sober, industrious man. They paid three and sixpence weekly for their room, when they could. Would I excuse her? She must get on with her work; she wanted to take it in. I excused her, and, leaving her a few shillings, went in search of the older woman. I found her in another small room; but, small as the room was, there were two beds in it, which were covered with match-boxes. A small table and two old chairs completed the furniture. She was seated making match-boxes as I entered, and I saw her hands moving with that dreadfully automatic movement that has so often made me shudder. She looked up at me, but on she went. I spoke to her of her son, told her my business, and ultimately sat down and watched her. Poor old woman! She was fifty-six, she told me. She might have been any age over seventy. She was a widow. She had lived in that room thirteen years, having come to it soon after her husband's death. Whilst I was speaking to her she got up from her boxes, took a small saucepan off the miserable fire, and out of it took some boiled rice, put it in an old saucer, sat down, and ate it. It was her dinner.