"She had sixteen lots of coal for one and elevenpence farthing; she can't pay me at all now, she is so far behind. I ought to have stopped her before, but I did not like to be hard on her." Several other "chalked up" accounts confronted me--one for sixpence, another for ninepence--but that one and elevenpence farthing was the heaviest account. It was too pitiful; I could inquire no further.
The difficulty of obtaining even minute quantities of coal constitutes one of the great anxieties of the very poor, and exposes them to unimaginable suffering and hardship.
To poor old women with chilly bones and thin blood, who especially need the glow and warmth of a substantial fire, the lack of coal constitutes almost, and in many cases quite, tragedy.
The poorest class of home-workers, who require warmth if their fingers are to be nimble and their boxes or bags are to be dried, must have some sort of a fire, even if it be obtained at the expense of food. Small wonder, then, that their windows are seldom opened, for the heat of the room must not be dissipated; they must be thrifty in that respect. During the winter, generally in January, I set out on a tour of discovery, my object being to find out old widows who manage to keep themselves without parish relief, and get their little living by making common articles for everyday use. Formerly I experienced great difficulty in finding the brave old things; I have no difficulty now, for at a day's notice I can assemble five hundred self-supporting widows to whom a single hundredweight of coal would loom so large that it would appear a veritable coal-mine.
So I ask my readers to accompany me on one of these expeditions--in imagination, of course. Come, then, through this side-door, for it stands open, though not invitingly so, for the stairs are uncarpeted and dirty and the walls are crumbling and foul.
We pass the room on the ground-floor, and observe that it is half workshop and half retail-shop, for old furniture is renovated and placed in the shop-window for sale. Up one flight of unwashed stairs and past another workshop--this time a printer's. Up again! The stairs are still narrow, and the walls are still crumbling, the stairs still unwashed. We pass another workshop, mount more stairs, and then we come to a small landing and some narrow, very narrow, stairs that are scrupulously clean, though innocent of carpet or linoleum.