From Chapter XX: A Winter Scene

“The cottages in our plate are tenanted by peasants more prosperous than some we know; yet even here what a life! The scanty cubic space filled with air poisoned with the organic exhalations of the eight human beings we saw sitting in the one room, where the hard-worked mother, dragged down by penury and child-bearing, was preparing a coarse meal for the delicate children, each of whom was suffering from eczema. Pure air and good food they needed, and neither could they get. Unconscious of their grinding fate, they raised to us their large blue serious eyes full of innocent wonder. The day was bitingly cold, but we were glad to get out once more into the air, and escape from that ill-smelling dwelling.

In our plate we see the young mother crossing a slippery ice-glazed plank which bridges the frozen dike. She, careless of her health, has come from the close house to call her husband, who is busy in the work-shop, to his dinner. He too has been ill with fever and cough-racking bronchitis, which subtly and slowly was blocking up the paths of his life with its viscid gum. Thanks to the rude doctoring of the village leech, he still lives on, and is now at work.”  p. 120