more than compensated by the increased happiness of their children and the increased prosperity of the community. One thing to me seems certain and palpable: working men cannot have home happiness and home culture and the public-house. The two are in direct antagonism. It is for them to make the choice. Will they make a wise choice? I doubt it, for has it not been said, ‘They who drink beer, think beer’? Nor is it the children of the poorest who leave home at an early age; for the poor widow, who is left to fight life’s battle with three or four children, manages, as a rule, to keep those children round her, and her struggles for them are heroic. Sometimes, it is true, the parish authorities take some or all the children off such a mother’s hands, but as a rule they keep their children round them. Day after day I meet with poorly-clad and badly-fed but plucky mothers, who, though working very hard, make a much better job of home-life and look much better after their children than many mothers who have stalwart husbands living with them and working for them. Very pleasant it is to see the boys and girls grow up, and in their turn relieving the mother’s toil and caring for her. But the police court affords no sadder sight than a poor, elderly widow who has come to plead for a son who has got into trouble. One such scene is before me now. A young man, about twenty-two, stands in the dock, and by him stands an officer supporting him, for he has been drinking heavily, and D.-T. is almost upon him; he is not conscious of what is said or what is done. In the witness-box stands a little woman with her arm bandaged. She is the prosecutor. ‘The only son of his mother, and she a widow.’ Twenty-one years before the desire of her eyes, the partner of her life, was taken away. After following the body of her husband to the cemetery, she returned home and looked upon her only boy in the cradle, and, like one of old, she said: ‘This same shall comfort me.’ And so she loved him as only a bereaved mother can love, and she worked for him as only a widowed woman can work. The years went on, and the boy was sent regularly to school. No half-time for the widow; her boy must have the full advantage the school could give, and he made good use of his time. Fourteen years rolled by, fourteen years of washing and charing for her, but now he must have a trade. No errand-boy’s place for him. She placed him as an apprentice with a saddler. She could pay no premium, so he must work for very little wage till his twenty-first birthday should come round. This meant seven more years of drudgery to her, but bravely she faced it, and the boy went through his apprenticeship. Many a time during those seven years he said to her, ‘Mother, you shan’t work so hard as this when I’m a man’; but they were years of happiness, for the widow’s heart was full of hope, and the seven years went by.