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228 she sometimes thought that what was gained in the shop was lost in*the house. She could only earn between three and four shillings a week at the anvil; but that was a great help to them, and helped out her husband's wages. One of her elder children, a girl of seven years, came in and we asked her if she could read. The little thing looked up brightly and said she was learning, and could already do some short words. The mother observed that she was determined that her children should have a little schooling, for she had seen the want of it herself. She had been set to work with the hammer when only eight years old, and had never been able to learn to read since.

I always love to walk about in the villages of the nail-makers. The clinking of hundreds of their little hammers supply the aria to the great concerts and oratorios of mechanical industry. They are poorly-paid and have to work long and hard to earn bread in competition with machinery. Indeed, it shows the superabundance and exigencies of labour that nails should be made at all by hand at this late day of mechanical improvements. But thousands of families in this district have inherited the trade from several generations of their ancestors, and they are born to it, apparently with a physical conformation to the work. Then thousands of cottages are equally conformed to