down and preparing the skins for the furriers, who will use them for cheap goods, dye them into imitations of rarer skins, and practise upon them the various tricks of the trade.

Floor, walls, ceiling, every inch of the one room these people live and sleep in, is covered with fluff and hair. How they breathe in it is a mystery to me. I tried and failed, and sought refuge on the doorstep. The pair, working night and day at their trade, make, when business is good, about twelve shillings a week. Their rent is four. This leaves them four shillings a week each to live upon, and as there is no one else to share it with them, I suppose they are well-to-do folk.

The younger woman's appearance was striking. Seated on the floor in an Eastern attitude, and white from top to toe—the effect of her dark eyes heightened by the contrast—she was a picture for an artist, and my fellow-worker made excellent use of his pencil, while I engaged her and her mother in conversation.

These people complained bitterly of their surroundings, of the character of the people they had to live among, and of the summary proceedings of their landlord, who absolutely refused to repair their room or give them the slightest convenience.

'Then why not move?' I ventured to suggest. 'Four shillings a week—ten guineas a year for this pigsty—is'. an exorbitant rent: you might do better.'

The woman shook her head. 'There's lots o' better places we'd like to go to, but they won't have us. They object to our business. We must go where they'll take us.'

'But there are plenty of places a little way out where you can have two rooms for what you pay for this.'

'A little way out, yes; but how are we to get to and fro with the work when it's done? We must be near our work. We can't afford to ride.'

Exactly! And therein lies one of the things which reformers have to consider. There are thousands of these families who would go away into the suburbs, where we want to get them, if only the difficulty of travelling expenses to and fro could be conquered. They herd together all in closely packed quarters because they must be where they can get to the dock, the yard, the wharf, and the warehouses without expense. The highest earnings of this class is rarely above sixteen shillings a week, and that, with four or five shillings for rent, leaves very little margin where the family is large. The omnibus and the train are the magicians which will eventually bid the rookeries disappear, but the services of these magicians cost money, and there is none to spare in the pockets of the poor.

In another room close to these people, but if anything in a more wretched condition still, we come upon a black man sitting with his head buried in his hands. He is suffering with rheumatics, and has almost lost the use of his limbs. The reason is evident. His wife points to the bed in the corner against the wall; the damp is absolutely oozing through and trickling down the wall. The black man is loquacious. He is a hawker, and can't go out and lay in a stock, for he hasn't a penny in the world. He is stone broke. He is a Protestant darkie, he informs us, and is full of troubles. Two boys are lolling about on the floor. At our entrance a shock-headed, ragged girl of ten has crawled under the bed. The Protestant darkie drags her out and explains she is 'a-bringin' him to his grave with sorrer—she's a bad gel and slangs her mother.' The P. D. doesn't know how he's going to pay his rent or where the next meal's coming from. He stands outside 'a corffee shop' generally, when he can get about, and 'the lady as keeps it, bless her!—she's a rare good'un to me—she's a fallen angel, that's what she is;' but he can't go and hawk nothing, else he'd be took up. 'I ain't got no capital, and, faith of a Protestant darkie, I'm defunct.'

The man has a host of quaint sayings and plenty of the peculiar wit of the nigger breed, but his position is undoubtedly desperate.

The rent of the death-trap he lives in with his wife and family is four and sixpence, and his sole means of subsistence is hawking shrimps and winkles when they are cheap, or specked oranges and damaged fruit. He has at the best of times only a shilling or two to lay out in the wholesale market, and out of his profit he must pay his rent and keep his family. I suspect that the 'fallen angel' is often good for a meal to the poor darkie, and I learn that he is a most respectable, hardworking fellow. 'How do you do when you're stone broke?' I ask him. 'Well, sir, sometimes I comes across a gentleman as gives me a bob and starts me again.'

The shot hits the mark, and we leave the Protestant darkie grinning at his own success, and debating with his wife what will be the best article in which to invest for the day's market.

Honest folks enough in their way, these—keeping themselves to themselves and struggling on as best they can, now 'making a bit over,' and now wondering where on earth the next sixpence is to come from. Just up the street is a house with an inscription over it which tells us we can find within a very different class to study. This is a licensed lodging-house, where you can be accommodated for fourpence or sixpence a night. This payment gives you during the day the privilege of using the common kitchen, and it is into the common kitchen we are going. We walk into the passage, and are stopped by a strapping young woman of about eight-and-twenty. She is the deputy. 'What do we want?'

Once again the password is given, and the attitude of the lady changes. She formally conducts us into a large room, where the strangest collection of human beings are crowded together. It is sheet-washing day, and there is a great fire roaring up the chimney. Its ruddy glare gives a Rembrandtish tone to the picture. Tables and forms run round, the room, and there is not a vacant place.' Men, women, and children are lolling about, though it is mid-day, apparently with nothing to do but make themselves comfortable. The company is not a pleasant one. Many of the men and women and boys are thieves. Almost every form of disease, almost every kind of deformity, seems crowded into this Chamber of Horrors. The features are mostly repulsive; an attractive face there is not among the sixty or seventy human beings in the room. Some of them are tramps and hawkers, but most of them are professional loafers, picking up in any way that presents itself the price of a night's lodging. They are a shifting population, and rarely remain in one house long. Some of them only get a night in now and then as a luxury, and look upon it as a Grand Hotel episode. They sleep habitually in the open, on the staircases, or in the casual ward. The house we are in is one where Nancy and Sikes come often enough when they are down on their luck. Here is a true story of this very place, which will perhaps illustrate sufficiently the type of its frequenters.

Some time last year two men left the house one morning. They were going into the country on business. One, whom I will call John, kissed his mistress, a girl of twenty, and said 'Good-bye,' leaving her at the house; he wouldn't be away long, and he and Bill, his companion, set out on their travels.

A day or two after Bill returns alone; the girl asks him where her sweetheart is. 'He's lagged,' says Bill. But the girl has a bit of newspaper, and in it she reads that 'the body of a man has been found in some woods near London;' and she has an idea it may be John. 'Oh, nonsense,' says Bill—I quote the evidence—'he then lit his candle, and they retired to rest.' John, as a matter of fact, had been murdered by his companion, they having quarrelled over the division of the proceeds of the burglary; and eventually this young woman, who so readily transferred her affections from one lord to another, appeared in the witness-box and deposed to pawning boots and other things for Bill which were undoubtedly the proceeds of a robbery at a house close to where the body was found.

This is the house in which we stand where the burglary was