We don't care: we have become hardened; and we even promise ourselves that other bags of coal shall follow. Then we examine their tea-caddies, and throw this tea-dust on the fire--a fitting death for it, too--and further demoralize the ancient three with the gift of a pound of good tea, each in a nice cannister, too. A hundredweight of coal and a pound of tea! Why, the teapot will be always in use till the pound is gone. The poor drink too much tea. Perhaps so; but what are the poor to drink? They have neither time, inclination, nor money for the public-house. Coffee is dear if it is to be good. Cocoa is thick and sickly. Water! Their water!--ugh! At present poor old women have the choice of tea or nothing. Then leave them, we beseech you, their teapot, but let us see to it that they have some decent tea. So, with five shillings in silver for each of them, we leave the dauntless three to their fire, their teapots, and wonder, and go into the streets with the feeling that something is wrong somewhere, but what it is and how to right it we know not.
I could, were it necessary, multiply experiences similar to the above, but they would only serve to prove, what I have already made apparent, that the worries and sufferings of the very poor are greatly aggravated by their inability to procure a reasonable supply of coal. Slate-clubs, men's meetings, and brotherhoods have of late years done much to secure artisans and working men who are earning decent wages a supply of good coal all the year round. Weekly payments of one shilling and upwards enable them to lay in a store when coal is cheap--if it is ever cheap--or to have an arrangement with the coal merchant for the delivery of a specified amount every week. People possessed of commodious coal-cellars may buy largely when coal prices are at their lowest; but the poor--the very poor--can neither buy nor store, for they have neither storehouses nor barns. Even if they could, by the exercise of great self-denial, manage to pay a sum of sixpence per week into a local coal-club, they have nowhere to put the supply when sent home to them. They must needs buy in very small quantities only. The advantages of co-operation are not for them, but are reserved for those that are better off. One scriptural injunction, at any rate, the community holds with grim tenacity: "To him that hath it shall be given."