Eight women were found who could neither read nor write. They said that it was not thought of much consequence when they were girls; but they evidently found it extremely humiliating now, from the difficulty with which the acknowledgment of their disability was pumped out of them. Of these eight, three had husbands who undertook the task for them. The men’s handwriting was excellent, the figures and spelling clear and correct, but at first details were lamentably absent. “Groceries,” even “sundries,” were common entries, and, as the scribe was always away at work, the visitor was left to the mercy of bursts of memory on the part of the mother, whose anxious efforts to please at any cost might land everybody concerned in further difficulties. The only method in such cases was to make her sit down and shut her eyes, pretend the visitor was her “young man” (generic term for husband), and think it out all over again. Pencil in hand, the eager listener caught and made accounts out of such recollections as these: “’E give me twenty-two bob a Satterday. After I put Ernie ter bed I went shoppin’ in the Walk.” Long pause. “I know I got ’arf a shoulder er mutton at 1s. 9d., an’ 3 pounds er pertaters, and they was 1½d., an’ a cabbage w’ich ’e said was as fresh as a daisy, but it turned out to be all fainty like w’en I come to cook it.” When the record is taken down in proper form, it is compared with the masculine accounts. If the two agree, jubilation; if not, why not? And we begin all over again. After a few weeks of such experiences the husband always reformed. Other illiterate women employed an eldest child of perhaps ten or eleven years of age. In these cases a certain kind of painstaking accuracy could be relied upon, but, far from resorting to masculine short-cuts, these little secretaries usually went to the other extreme, and gave way to a prolix style, founded, doubtless, on the maternal manner of recollecting. One account, kept in large copybook hand by Emma, aged eleven, began as follows: “Mr G’s wages was 19 bob out of that e took thruppons for es diner witch is not mutch e bein sutch a arty man. The rent was six and Mrs G payed fower an six because Bobby’s boots was off is feet and his knew ones was one an six witch makes six and that leaves 12 an 9 and out of that,” etc. It took four pages of painstaking manuscript in a school exercise-book to complete one week. This serial story had to be reduced, though with regret, to the limits of ordinary accounts. Other young scribes had special tricks, such as turning their fractions upside down or running two or more words into one. “Leggerbeef” and “dryaddick” recurred week after week in one book, and “lberpeces” in another. The first two only had to be pronounced to solve their own riddle, but the third had to be worried through recollection after recollection till it turned out to mean “1 lb. of pieces,” or 1 lb. of scraps of meat.