was of yours, a sort of cart-horse like bound.  I have spoken angrily to you; I have heard others speak angrily to you, but never did that sweet face of yours, for it was a sweet face—­that sweet, natural goodness that is so sublime—­lose its expression of perfect and unfailing kindness.  Words convey little sense of the real horrors of the reality.  Life in your case meant this:  to be born in a slum, and to leave it to work seventeen hours a day in a lodging-house; to be a Londoner, but to know only the slum in which you were born and the few shops in the Strand at which the landlady dealt.  To know nothing of London meant in your case not to know that it was not England; England and London! you could not distinguish between them.  Was England an island or a mountain? you had no notion.  I remember when you heard that Miss L——­ was going to America, you asked me, and the question was sublime:  “Is she going to travel all night?” You had heard people speak of travelling all night, and that was all you knew of travel or any place that was not the Strand.  I asked you if you went to church, and you said “No, it makes my eyes bad.”  I said, “But you don’t read; you can’t read.”  “No, but I have to look at the book.”  I asked you if you had heard of God; you hadn’t; but when I pressed you on the point you suspected I was laughing at you, and you would not answer, and when I tried you again on the subject I could see that the landlady had been telling you what to say.  But you had not understood, and your conscious ignorance, grown conscious within the last couple of days, was even more pitiful than your unconscious ignorance when you answered that you couldn’t go to church because it made your eyes bad.  It is a strange thing to know nothing; for instance, to live in London and to have no notion of the House of Commons, nor indeed of the Queen, except perhaps that she is a rich lady; the police—­yes, you knew what a policeman was because you used to be sent to fetch one to make an organ-man or a Christy minstrel move on.  To know of nothing but a dark kitchen, grates, eggs and bacon, dirty children; to work seventeen hours a day and to get cheated out of your wages; to answer, when asked, why you did not get your wages or leave if you weren’t paid, that you “didn’t know how Mrs. S——­ would get on without me.”

This woman owed you forty pounds, I think, so I calculated it from what you told me; and yet you did not like to leave her because you did not know how she would get on without you.  Sublime stupidity!  At this point your intelligence stopped.  I remember you once spoke of a half-holiday; I questioned you, and I found your idea of a half-holiday was to take the children for a walk and buy them some sweets.  I told my brother of this and he said—­Emma out for a half-holiday! why, you might as well give a mule a holiday.  The phrase was brutal, but it was admirably descriptive of you.  Yes, you are a mule, there is no sense in you; you are a beast