"There will be a great deal of war-paint going round soon, in the shape of titles, honours, and decorations, official rewards for 'killing, slaying and burning.' Will you give a decoration to the little motherless girl of ten, Louisa Row,[2] who 'undertook the cooking' for her father, 'a labourer,' and his family, and died in the execution of her duty? "She has not killed anyone, black or white, except herself; she has not burned anyone's huts, or anyone's villages--she has only burned herself. She will get no glory, unless you, with a stroke of your pen, will put one little star of honour upon her unknown grave. "THE AUTHOR OF _Olive Varcoe_." [Footnote 2: "A painful death by burning has happened at Torquay. Louisa Row, aged ten, lost her mother a few weeks ago, and undertook the cooking for her father, a labourer, and the rest of the family. She had well performed the duties devolving upon her since her mother's death, until one day she went too near the grate, her frock was ignited, and she was terribly burned. The poor child lived several days after the accident. At the inquest a verdict of 'Accidental death' was returned."] Will our correspondent accept this inscription for her poor little martyr's tombstone? Duty's small Servant, without prize or praise, How soon on thy hard life hath death come down! Take this brief record of thy childish days-- Gold, tried with fire, makes the best Martyr's Crown. _Punch's_ record as the champion of the working children leaves little room for criticism. And we have seen in several of the extracts given above that his severest censures are directed against the employers of labour, the greed of gain, the worship of Mammon. But if he cannot be convicted of partiality to capital, he was not always fair to labour. Even in his most democratic days he showed a distrust of "delegates." The working man's grievances were admitted, but his salaried spokesmen, when they were drawn from his own order, were condemned, with very few exceptions, as untrustworthy mischief-makers. How acute this distrust had now become may be gathered from the acrimonious article which appears in 1861 under the heading "A Dig at the Delegates":--