When once I had seen from the leads of our house the quag of reeking life around, the stubs and snags of chimney-pots, the gashes among them entitled streets, and the broken blains called houses, I was quite ashamed of paying any thing to become a Christian.
Betsy, who stood by me, said that it was better than it used to be, and that all these people lived in comfort of their own ideas, fiercely resented all interference, and were good to one another in their own rough way.

It was more than three years since there had been a single murder among them, and even then the man who was killed confessed that he deserved it.

She told me, also, that in some mining district of Wales, well known to her, things were a great deal worse than here, although the people were not half so poor.

And finally, looking at a ruby ring which I had begged her to wear always, for the sake of her truth to me, she begged me to be wiser than to fret about things that I could not change.

"All these people, whose hovels I saw, had the means of grace before them, and if they would not stretch forth their hands, it was only because they were vessels of wrath.