"There's bin an accident," he faltered, "we'n foun' a mon o' th' rails--dead--cut t' pieces by a train." Old Lizzie stared at him in silence; then a light seemed to break in on her. "Ah," she said. "Happen it's our Bill!" And with that she turned on her heel and went upstairs to select a winding-sheet for him. Some of our folks like to talk about their troubles. Over and over again they tell you, almost in the same words, exactly how it all came about. A poor woman pleats her apron and gazes at you with pathetic eyes, which she stops to wipe occasionally. The story has grown familiar to both relater and listener, and sometimes you are regaled not only with the tale itself, but with the repetition of your own comments thereon. "I mind ye said so and so," she says, "an' it's often seemed to comfort me." Clearly there is nothing for it but immediately to say it again, and you are rewarded by seeing the face brighten perceptibly, much as a child's brightens as it hears a well--known point in a familiar tale. These simple people are very like children. But sometimes the pain is too great to be dilated on, and then a chance phrase or word, infinitely pathetic, betrays the depth of sorrow; sometimes there is silence more pathetic still. Looking into a cottage, one day, where the week before a little child had been carried to the churchyard, I found the mother hard at work, ironing. "I will not come in," I said. "You are busy." "Nay, ma'am, coom your ways in an' sit ye down. There's no hurry. I'm nobbut puttin' away our Teddy's little clothes." Not another word did she say in allusion to her sorrow, and no tears fell on the little worn garments. Poor little garments, so pathetically bringing to mind the wee lost personality! Darned socks which had covered active little feet; tiny short "knickers" patched at the knees; shabby coat--moulded, it would seem, into the very shape of the chubby figure--the mother ironed and polished them, and laid them in a tidy heap. As she worked she tried to talk of other things, but her face told its own tale, and I went away with an aching heart. The men carry their troubles afield; manual labour dulls, if it does not altogether exorcise, them; some have other less creditable means of seeking oblivion. But the poor women, shut in in their little houses, with their anxieties and sorrow staring them in the face--God help them! So narrow are their lives, so few their experiences, that their thoughts must run perpetually in the same groove; everything which surrounds them, their "sticks" of furniture, their little household gods, are reminders of lost joys and present grief.