THOSE WHO MOURN. 119 



" The poor woman was crying- very bitterly, so I said gently, ' I hope you won't 

 think I am asking all these questions from idle curiosity ;' and I shall never forget her 

 quick disclaimer, for she saw that I was troubled with her : ' Oh no, sir ; I am glad to 

 answer you, for so many homes might be kept from being desolate if it was only looked 

 into/ 



"1 ascertained that she is ' getting a bit winning for a livelihood/ as my informant 

 phrased it, by sewing for a ready-made clothes-shopkeeper. She was in a small garret 

 with a sloping roof and the most modest fireplace I ever saw ; just three bits of iron 

 laid from side to side of an opening in the brickwork, and two more up the front; 

 no chimney-piece, or jambs, or stone across the top, but just the bricks laid nearer 

 and nearer until the courses united. So I don't fancy she could be earning much. 

 But with the very least money value in the place, it was as beautifully clean as I ever 

 saw a room in my life. 



" I also saw a poor woman, who had lost her son aged twenty-two. She too 

 cried bitterly, as she spoke with such love and pride of her son, and of the grief of 

 his father, who was sixty years of age. Her son was taken on as a stoker, and 

 worked on the ship some days before she was ready for sea. He did not want to go 

 when he saw how she was loaded. She looked like a floating wreck, but they refused 

 to pay him the money he had earned unless he went, and he too was lost with the 

 others. 



" Just one more specimen of the good, true, and brave men we sacrifice by our 

 most cruel and manslaughtering neglect. This time I went and called upon an old man 

 I knew, and, after apologising for intruding upon his grief, I asked him to tell me if 

 he had any objection to tell me if his son had had any misgiving about the ship before 

 he went. He said, f Yes, I went to see the ship myself, and was horrified to see the 

 way in which she was loaded. I tried all I could to persuade him not to go, but he'd 

 been doinir nothing for a long- time, and he didn't like being a burden on me. He'd a fine 



O O O ' C* 



sperret, he had, my son,' said the poor old man. 



" Here a young woman I had not observed (she was in a corner with her face to 

 the wall) broke out into loud sobs and said, ' He was the best of us all, sir the best 

 of the whole family. He was as fair as a flower, and vah-y canny -looking.' ' 



But it is not merely rotten hulks which may become coffin-ships : many superior 

 vessels are woefully deficient in accommodation for the sailor's comfort. He may, and 

 often does, wade to his bunk through water, and the forecastle is too often a miserable 

 hole, full of dirt and filth, where the men are packed like herrings. The food provided 

 is principally "salt horse" and "hard bread," i.e., sailor's biscuit of the most inferior 

 description ; and when scurvy ensues, as a natural consequence of exposure to damp and 

 cold, with poor living superadded, the very lime-juice, which is nearly worthless if not 

 pure, is found to be a miserable imitation or grossly adulterated with citric acid, which, 

 strange as it may appear, has no anti-scorbutic properties. In the Russian and French 

 mercantile marines there is little or no scurvy, in consequence of the pretty general use 

 of common sour wine, which in some degree makes Tip for the lack of fresh vegetables. 

 And in French mercantile ships the sailor may at any time demand the same rations as 



