There are many more cases of extreme suffering in this country than persons are generally willing to believe.  These extreme cases are among those whose peculiar feelings will not allow of their making known their real condition.  They are such as were once members of some social circle, far removed indeed from the apparent chances of poverty.  Their shrinking pride, their yearning desire for independence clings closer and closer to them, and operates more and more powerfully, as they sink lower and lower, from uncontrollable causes, into the vale of want and destitution.  Beggars with no feelings, and no claims beyond those of idleness and intemperance, thrust themselves forward, and consume the bread of charity, that should go to nourish the widow and the orphan, who suffer daily and nightly, rather than ask for aid.

One to whom the idea of eating the bread of charity had ever been a painful and revolting one, was Mrs. Warburton.  So long as she was able, she had earned with untiring industry, the food that nourished her children.  But close confinement, insufficient nourishment, labour beyond her strength, and above all, a wounded spirit, at last completed the undermining work, which threw down the tottering and feeble health that had long kept her at her duties.

It was mid-winter when she was severely attacked by a bilious-pleurisy.  For some weeks she had drooped about, hardly able to perform half her wonted labour—­most of that time suffering from a hard cough and distressing pain in the side, which was augmented almost to agony while bending steadily, and for hours over her work.  Taking, as it did, all that she could earn to keep herself and children in comfort during the winter, she had nothing laid up for a time of more pressing need; and, as for the last few weeks, she had earned so little as to have barely enough for necessaries, when helplessness came, she was in utter destitution, Her wood was just out, except a few hard, knotted logs; her flour was out, and her money gone.  When she could no longer sit up, she sent her little boy for a physician, who bled her, and left her some powerful medicines.  The first gave temporary relief, and the latter reduced her to a state of great bodily and mental weakness.  He did not call in again until the second day, when he found the children both in bed with their mother, who was suffering greatly from a return of the pain in her side.  The room was chilly, for there was no fire, and it was intensely cold without, and the ground covered with a deep snow.  He again bled her, which produced immediate relief, and learning that she had no wood, called in at the next door, where lived a wealthy family, and stated the condition of their poor neighbour A child of six years old stood by his mother while the physician was speaking.  The lady seemed much affected when told of the sufferings of the, poor woman, politely thanked the physician for making her acquainted with the fact, and promised immediate attention.