Here is a poor fellow who used to be
employed in a mill, but who has been fifteen
or sixteen months with his occupation gone. He
has depending on him, an old mother, and a half-
witted brother: the last, subject to fits of
violent madness at times.

I went to see this excellent fellow— the sane
brother I mean. He was in first-rate spirits—
in far better spirits than some of my wealthy
acquaintances — but such a ruinous state of things
I have seldom come in contact with. The room
into which we went from the street, had a
counter stretching half way across it, a bare
counter, with not even a beggarly account of
empty boxes behind it. There was nothing to
sell, but about the room hung several birdcages,
and three or four of them were tenanted. The
owner of this wretched attempt at a shop was
sitting within the useless counter by a bit of
fire, and, standing in a purposeless way in the
middle of the apartment, was the half-witted
brother. He was a wild strong-looking fellow,
with a dangerous stare in his eye. He stood
with his hands in his pockets, and wore a swallow-
tailed dress-coat of great age, which I suppose
some one had given him. I must confess that
he did not appear to me to be best pleased with
our intrusion, and it would not in the least have
surprised me if he had sprang over the counter
and inflicted serious damage upon myself or
the friends who had introduced me. The half-
witted man began soon after we entered to
comb his hair with a pin, and continued so
to occupy himself with little intermission during
our stay.

The sane brother of this poor fellow was
perfectly free and communicative, so I got into
conversation with him easily enough. I may as
well mention at once, that the people belonging
to these manufacturing districts are wholly
destitute of the snob element, and are not in
the least impressed by your condescension in
paying them a visit. But, as I did not call
those people into whose houses I begged
permission to enter, " my dear friends," or treat
them like very little children, or in any way
try to patronise them or exalt my highly
important self, I was hospitably received.

What a story that was of the two brothers!
The sane one—who will, by some practical
people, be set down as anything but sane, for
his pains—would not part with poor Mad Tom,
even in spite of his violent fits, in spite of
the inconvenience he must have caused, in spite
of the temptation of getting rid of his keep
through the help of an asylum. What devotion
this was! What love! Mad Tom could
be of no sort of use. Far from it. He had
once, indeed, been sent out to sell a few penny
periodicals for his brother, but this had not
turned out a profitable transaction, as the
poor fellow (being mad, remember) gave away
all the money he got, before he came home
again.

This selling of penny papers was one of the
schemes in which the poor unemployed elder
brother had engaged, with a view of keeping a
house over his head and a spark of fire going in
the grate. Besides this, he had invested the
little he had been able to save in better days, in
the purchase of some odds and ends of furniture
and other matters, with the idea of selling them
again at a trifling profit. That empty counter
already spoken of, had been such a purchase, and
had been picked up a bargain. If a business
could only have been bought with that counter!
But the setting up of counters is one thing, and
the transaction of business across the same is
quite another. An enormous pair of iron scales,
with a beam about five feet in length, was another
trifle which our poor amateur broker had picked
up cheap, and for which he told us, in the
jolliest way imaginable, he was open to an
offer, at a very moderate profit.

Sometimes, and while these particulars were
coming out, our conversation would turn on the
eccentricities of poor Mad Tom, and to all such
matters he would himself listen, standing behind
the counter with his hands in his pockets, or
working away with his pin, and looking as if the
case under discussion was that of some
unfortunate individual living, we will say, in the
heart of Poland, so little did it appear to have
to do with him. He did not even rally to a sense
of his connexion with the matter in hand, when
his brother, in reply to our expressions of
surprise at the number of birdcages about the
room, informed us that they were this poor
feather-brained fellow's own handiwork, and
that his brain attacks—which had been attributable
to his having been crossed in love many
years ago—had been materially alleviated, since
he had taken to making these very birdcages.
What a cure for the heartache! What an
inconceivable mixture of tragedy and comedy.
Love, madness,—and birdcages,

I sometimes set down such things as these
with fear and trembling, lest those who have not
observed this grotesque element in all human
misery should think the mere mention of such
matters an unfeeling thing. Any one disposed
to think thus will be of a different opinion after
a little reflection. There was scarcely any case
of distress with which I came in contact in the
cotton district, or with which I have at other
times and in other places been mixed up,
in which there were not these quasi-comic
elements. No one will feel the less for these
suffering people, but rather the more, because this
poor fellow got relief in his love-madness through
the agency of so anomalous a remedy as the
making of birdcages.

And this case—so little prone are the people
to call attention to their need— might have
remained unknown to this day, and the daily
increasing want of this little household remained
unalleviated, but for an accident. The poor
mad brother—probably with a view of setting
matters right and making the fortune of the
establishment—called upon one of those
gentlemen who are on the look-out for such
instances of suffering, and, bringing with him a
bucket without a bottom to it, asked him very
gravely whether he knew of any one who would