In my first visit to the Potteries, I was accompanied by the City Missionary, who introduced me to some fourteen or sixteen females residing there.

I was, as usual, at once impressed with the great deficiency of home comforts; and the miserable countenances of many of the children told, more forcibly than words could have done, of neglect and bad management.

I told them I had just come to reside near them, and I hoped we should be good neighbours. Like them, I was so occupied with my home duties, that I feared I should not be able to visit them frequently; but it had occurred to me, that if they could spare an hour one evening in the week, I would try to do so also, and we would spend it together in conversing over our various duties and diffi

el

re

ta

to

W

as

n

W

n

culties, more especially those relating to our
children, and by this means I hoped we might
benefit each other, as well as become better
acquainted.

This invitation was by no means warmly
responded to at first, but it was the first step
taken towards the formation of the Kensing-
ton Potteries' Mothers' Society.

One morning, a very decent elderly woman,
whom I had seen at the Mothers' Meetings,
asked me to call upon her husband, who had
not been able to leave his house for some
weeks, and was too ill to read. In the after-
noon I went to the Potteries. Fortunately,
I met a boy of my acquaintance in the street,
and he conducted me to the dwelling, which,
with the direction given to me that "it was
in no street in particular," would have proved
difficult to find. I had to pass through a
kind of shed to reach the room in which this
old couple lived. It was filled with feeding-
troughs, tubs, old hoops and wheel-barrows.
I managed to steer safely through all this,
and ascended two or three steps into the one
chamber, which served at once for bed-room,
kitchen and living-room. The man was sit-
ting in a comfortable arm-chair, by a neat

RACTER.

ry clean. H

cantily covers s I have eve were of a ver g marked hi power." H ered; but h in, as has the

d gave mes d annoyed a gain, "John often, and I

her to come

wer. come from said, "I am fering from

1. I have

I have

been very rumble at months."

ad much

you find

ctive life

"I shouldn't find the time tedious at all, if we were only left to ourselves." I looked to the wife for an explanation, and she said, "He means, ma'am, that the neighbors hereabout annoy him so by their ways of going on."

This touched a theme upon which he could be eloquent. He began to tell me a great deal about the wickedness of his neighbours. Their desecration of the Sabbath seemed to vex him exceedingly. He complained that he could get no peace on the Sunday for the cries of those who went about selling things; while the swarms of children that came out to spend their halfpence that day showed how wicked their parents must be. As I generally avoid talking of the faults of other persons when visiting the poor, I said, (wishing to change the subject,) "Well, we have so much to do with ourselves that we must not judge our neighbors harshly."

The old man looked indignantly at me, and exclaimed, "Do you think if God was to call me away this instant, and I had to go to be judged before His throne, and He was to tell me of all the wicked ways I have seen going on before my eyes, and He was to say to me,