From an article in _The Lowell Offering_, (“Our Household,” signed H. T.,) I am able to quote a sketch of one factory boarding-house interior. The author said, “In our house there are eleven boarders, and in all thirteen members of the family. I will class them according to their religious tenets as follows: Calvinist Baptist, Unitarian, Congregational, Catholic, Episcopalian, and Mormonite, one each; Universalist and Methodist, two each; Christian Baptist, three. Their reading is from the following sources: They receive regularly fifteen newspapers and periodicals; these are, the _Boston Daily Times_, the _Herald of Freedom_, the _Signs of the Times_, and the _Christian Herald_, two copies each; the _Christian Register_, _Vox Populi_, _Literary Souvenir_, _Boston Pilot_, _Young Catholic’s Friend_, _Star of Bethlehem_, and _The Lowell Offering_, three copies each. A magazine, one copy. We also borrow regularly the _Non-Resistant_, the _Liberator_, the _Lady’s Book_, the _Ladies’ Pearl_, and the _Ladies’ Companion_. We have also in the house what perhaps cannot be found anywhere else in the city of Lowell,--a Mormon Bible.” The “magazine” mentioned may have been _The Dial_, that exponent of New England Transcendentalism, of which _The Offering_ was the humble contemporary. The writer adds to her article: “Nothwithstanding the divers faiths embraced among us, we live in much harmony, and seldom is difference of opinion the cause of dissensions among us.” Novels were not very popular with us, as we inclined more to historical writings and to poetry. But such books as “Charlotte Temple,” “Eliza Wharton,” “Maria Monk,” “The Arabian Nights,” “The Mysteries of Udolpho,” “Abellino, the Bravo of Venice,” or “The Castle of Otranto,” were sometimes taken from the circulating library, read with delight, and secretly lent from one young girl to another. Our religious reading was confined to the Bible, Baxter’s “Saints’ Rest,” “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” “The Religious Courtship,” “The Widow Directed,” and Sunday-school books. It was fortunate for us that we were obliged to read good books, such as histories, the English classics, and the very few American novels that were then in existence. Cheap editions of Scott were but just publishing; “Pickwick,” in serial numbers, soon followed; Frederika Bremer was hardly translated; Lydia Maria Child was beginning to write; Harriet Beecher Stowe was busy in her nursery, and the great American novel was not written,--nor yet the small one, which was indeed a blessing!