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How many times the poor old, heart-broken creatures went supperless to bed, let "the opening of the books" declare, for Siddleton was too much exasperated by his disappointment, to flinch. The paupers, however, among themselves, had inaugurated a system which, despite the police regulations of Mr. and Mrs. Siddleton, afforded them partial relief. This was simply a system of begging. Dan was particularly successful in this sort of foraging. Taking with him an old bag, he wandered off some distance from home, often two, four and six miles, varying his field of operations to avoid too great frequency of application, and frequently returned with a large quantity of provision, of every possible kind and quality, which was freely passed around among the company. But for this timely supply, Mr. Siddleton's meagre looking folks had we fear, during this period, paid larger installments than ever they had before on the great debt of Nature.

The sun had hardly gone down, when Mrs. Siddleton entered the sitting-room of her dependent household with her scalding hot tea and smoking hot cream and buttered toast. Let us show you some of them.

Here is the widow Prescott, nearly ninety years of age, not yet quite purified in the furnace, and so her trial-day lasts on. Here is Dan, trembling with the breaking up of his strong constitution, and shrinking and wasting like other feeble men; and Bill is half bed-rid and lame, his mind being stronger than his frame; and there sits Tucker on a chest, leaning on a staff, looking out of ghastly eyes, and holding up an unshaven face, ugly and hateful. Within that room where there is an opened door, on his bed, groaning in his bodily suffering, is Hicks, the old man, who is not long for earth. There, in another room, are two women in one bed: these are Mag Davis and Roxy. Roxy is failing; she has not been well for several weeks; but this causes her no particular feeling. She is more disturbed about the non-fulfillment of that dream of Mag's, than any thing else of mortal or immortal thought. She often asks, "Will it not be fulfilled, Mag?" And Mag answers, "Yes!" Mag Davis is tired and hungry, and expects no supper on account of offending her mistress in the morning. Mag holds well to life. Aunt Wakeup sits rocking herself to and fro in another room, smoking her pipe, and talking vehemently and rapidly through her long, thin skeleton lips to sister Peters -- poor, forsaken, coughing old invalid, one of these days to pass off!

Here also, in another quarter, in the wing opening beyond, are the paupers Rogers, aunt Jemima Hildreth, Mrs. Upham, Sam. White, Susan Carpenter, and Harry the deaf boy.

They wear a hungry, wan-looking, wretched aspect, and seem nerveless, irresolute, and stupified. Their garments hang flapping over their loose and lean anatomy like the wet, dripping, and torn canvass of a vessel around the bending yards and ropes. There is a cadaverous expression on their countenances, a ghastly, furious, lean look, that makes one shrink away. Their breathing makes the air of the room loathsome beyond the freshening breezes of the outside to sweeten -- a smell of mouldy ink, of rusty rope, of dark, unventilated closets, filled with old and musty shoes and soiled garments. It smells of wounds undressed and festered; of hair uncombed for long; of scurvy-fever left unwashed upon the surface, and a visitation oft of death-air in first at this, and anon at that, window of the house. Their movements are tottering, or carelessly bold and slattering. Their bearing towards you is timid or lawless, towards each other stupid and aimless. Here they live, sicken, starve, tremble, mourn and die. Crowded together in rooms that Would poorly accommodate four persons, are nearly twenty paupers; and still -- it might he worse! (15)