“I am sorry that I have come to the end of my life, because life was never so well worth living as now, when it is quite the fashion for a man to give what he has got for the good of his fellows. I have something which I also wish to give; but every man gives in his own way, and I know—for I have dreamed of it by day and night—exactly how I wish my gift to be administered. And I write to you because I have a great hope that you will help me. “Let me tell you a little of myself. I was born in a narrow street in Bristol, and my childhood’s home was a house of four small rooms. My father was a bricklayer’s labourer, who earned eighteen shillings a week. He married early, and there were seven children. My father was a decent man, who did the best he could, and gave all his earnings to his wife; but my mother was a poor, incapable creature, who had been a factory girl from the time when she was ten years old until she was married, and who had not the least idea how to make the best of the small means she had. I can remember her as a young woman, with dirty face and ragged dress and untidy hair, sitting for the most part of the day on the doorstep or by the fire, gossiping with the neighbours or reading cheap papers while the breakfast-things were still on the table, and no dinner was ready for my father when he came home. We lived on bread bought at the baker’s; we were all dirty and ragged; there was always a baby, and my mother never seemed anything but miserable and cross. She used to beat us savagely at times, and though I have often tried, I do not remember any time when she took me into her arms, or taught me a useful lesson. And yet she was not what is generally called a bad woman; she was ignorant and incapable; she had been vain and uncontrolled, she had married without serious thoughts, and had not the energy to meet the circumstances of her life, or fulfil its tasks. “Our father was kind to us, and I do not think that he quarrelled with my mother oftener than he could help; he never spent much money in the public-house; he made his small wages go as far as they could without his wife’s help, but she never seconded his endeavours, and our home was as miserable as thousands of other working men’s homes are, and which are made a thousand times more so by the hopelessness and idleness and incapacity of the conscienceless women who are in them.