Nor was there any limit as to the earliness of the age at which a child might be set to work. About five or six seems to have been a common age for beginning. I have, myself, been acquainted with a woman of about eighty years old who told me that as a child of five, when she was too little to reach the work table and had to stand upon a stool, she was employed all day long in “running blonde net.” Evidence was brought forward—exactly as similar evidence is brought forward to-day in America—to show that it was not really injurious to children of nine years old and under to be kept working for 14 or 15 hours daily; and, no doubt, there were persons not in the least inhumane who really thought so. The best of us are liable to social blindness, and able to see but a small part of contemporary evils that become plainly visible and unendurable to succeeding generations. An instance of such blindness, in the case of the disinterested and open minded Maria Edgeworth, may be found in the pages of her _Rosamond_—that delightful children’s book too little known to the modern child. In reading the passage it should be remembered that the whole Edgeworth family were persons of unusual enlightenment and benevolence, and that the view presented probably typifies the bettermost stratum of contemporary sentiment. Rosamond, with her parents, goes to visit a cotton mill conducted by “a very sensible, humane man, who did not think only of how he could get so much work done for himself, but also how he could preserve the health of those who worked for him; and how he could make them as comfortable and happy as possible.” This good employer was in all probability drawn from some member of the Strutt family. By and by, while the visitors are resting and eating “cherries, ripe cherries, strawberries and cream,” provided by “this hospitable gentleman,” Godfrey calls to his parents to “‘look out of this window.... All the people are going from work. Look what numbers of children are passing through this great yard!’ “The children passed close by the window at which Godfrey and Rosamond had stationed themselves. Among the little children came some tall girls and among these there was one, a girl about twelve years old, whose countenance particularly pleased them. Several of the younger ones were crowding round her. “‘Laura, Laura, look at this girl! What a good countenance she has,’ said Rosamond, ‘and how fond the little children seem of her!’ “‘That is Ellen. She is an excellent girl,’ said the master of the manufactory, ‘and those little children have good reason to be fond of her.’” He then relates how a good clergyman, who had taught the children and won their grateful affection, had been appointed to a post elsewhere. “‘All the children in the manufactory were sorry that he was going away, and they wished to do something that should prove to him their respect and gratitude.