Mill after mill closed, and the dark, quiet buildings stood among the starving people like monuments of despair.

No one indeed can imagine the pathos of these black deserted factories, that had once blazed with sunlight and gaslight and filled the town with the stir of their clattering looms and the traffic of their big lorries and wagons and the call and song of human voices.

In their blank, noiseless gloom, they too seemed to suffer.[1] FOOTNOTE: [Footnote 1: I need hardly remind my readers that I refer to the war of 1861 between the Northern and Southern States.

At this time it was in its third year, and the Southern States were closely blockaded and no cotton allowed to leave them.

Consequently the cotton-spinning counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire were soon destitute of the necessary staple, and to be "out of cotton" meant to more than a million cotton-spinning families absolute starvation--for a cotton-spinner's hands are fit for no other labor, and are spoiled by other work.