GEORDIE PITMAN [To the Editor of the Spherallort.]
• feel impelled to send you my thanks for this romantic-
and truthful tale of the miner. May I supplement the para- graph which refers to him as "one of the most loyal, warm- hearted men alive, as responsive to any genuine sympathy and interest as any man alive" ?
Six months before Queen Victoria's death I went to work in a mining parish, as a layman. My room became quickly the centre of a small coterie of these lads who night after night came in, the sole hospitality being a cup of tea or cocoa. At the death of the Queen I was able by the help of the Vicar and others to take fourteen of them up to the funeral, starting at 7 p.m. on the Friday night from Huddersfield (a three miles walk in snow) and returning at 2 a.m. on the Sunday morning, Nine months later I was ordained as deacon in Wakefield Cathedral, and these same boys walked the distance from Huddersfield before 8 a.m., to be present at the service (in the absence of trains).
A month later a few of them came to see me in my first curacy, a parish in Halifax. 'Within a week a telegram came to ask me to go at once to see the most uncouth of a very courteous lot on his deathbed from a mine accident. In very truth there are three facts for us English to remember.
1. In a mining village "in the midst of life we are in death."
2. We owe as a nation an untold debt of gratitude to the heroism of the uncomplaining wives and mothers.
3. We have no more gallant lot than the miners.
Cannot these three wonderful facts be more often expressed in public, and turned to a greater account ? As this letter IS very personal, I beg to sign myself anonymously.—! ain,
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