thing to one another; felt, I mean, that we were all wanted, like, to make the world go on right.” I told him, I thought many masters of the present day felt just what he said, and honoured and valued their servants, and wished very much that they should have proper time for improving themselves, and making their own homes comfortable; “but,” I said, “you know as well as I do, that when men _get_ this time, they do not always make a right use of it.” “Ah, that’s how it is, you see, ma’am; and I am always a-telling ’em how they do stand in their own way, and hurt theirselves. Though we can’t have everything we want to get, there is a good many of ’em needn’t be half so bad off as they are; but you see, ma’am, there is a great deal of bad management at home, sometimes, and that always keeps a man down. I have looked after this thing so long, that I can pretty well tell whether a man has got a good home or not, afore I ask him. He always holds up his head, and doesn’t seem afraid of anybody; and if things do go cross with him, he does not get reckless, like, about it, and he takes the world kinder, like, than other people. I am so thankful to have this nice place to myself here, and to be able to send my children to school, and see ’em growing up the right way, that I never envies nobody. If master were to offer me his carriage, and to change places with him, I wouldn’t; for I know I’m happy now, and I mightn’t be then.” I asked him what he supposed to be the cause why so many working-men had such wretched homes. “Why, ma’am,” he answered, “there is so many things, I hardly know what to say. The drink seems the chief thing; but there is many a man that wouldn’t drink, if he could bear himself without it. There are so many women who don’t seem to know how to manage no more than nothing; and when _they_ take to drinking and going to the pawn-shop, then there is nothing but misery for them all. There’s many a woman in our place who has only one decent gown, and that’s most always in the pawn-shop; she just gets it out of a Saturday night, when the money comes in, and by Monday sometimes the money is a’most gone, and she puts it in again. Some of our poor fellows have got but one shirt; and I have known a man give it to his wife on Monday morning to wash, and she has taken it off to the pawn-shop, and got some drink with the money she got. Sometimes when the wife does try to go on right, the man don’t; he takes to all the bad ways, and leads her a dog’s life: it is only when they both pull one way that it all goes right.” After the distress of the winter, to which I have before referred, I thought it a good time to endeavour to make some impression upon them as to the urgent necessity of making provision for the future, so that there might not be a constant repetition of such terrible calamities. I therefore addressed the following letter to them, and sent a copy to each man in the Potteries:—