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do so, it will relapse into the obscurity from which the genius of its leader has lifted it. A more tenable grudge is felt against it by other religious and charitable organisations engaged in similar philanthropic work, which likely to be straitened by the diversion of subscriptions to the General's scheme. No doubt this is a hard case, but we have little apprehension that these will suffer seriously in the long-run. General Booth's attitude ought to put all other organisations working among the poor upon their mettle, and we cannot doubt but that they also will be liberally supported as they continue to show good results for their efforts. A nation so wealthy as Great Britain, and so much in earnest to deal with the progress of destitution, is able to float even such a gigantic work as that which is now proposed, and at the same time to carry on those less obtrusive, but not less valuable, efforts which, long before the Salvation Army came into existence, were in operation for the reclamation of the fallen and the relief of the destitute in our large towns.

The continually increasing mass of the necessitous in London and other large cities, however, offers a problem far beyond the power of General Booth or any other philanthropic agency to deal with, if it is to be augmented so largely by the poverty stricken population of the counties and pauper immigrants from other countries. The case of these two classes seriously demands the attention of the Legislature. Some means ought to be found to check the inundation of foreign paupers, who add to the intensity of native destitution and complicate the labour problem, already difficult enough to deal with. General Booth's book affords a melancholy testimony to the num

bers of country people who throng into London in the vain hope of bettering their fortunes, and find starvation to be their only certainty.

"After careful examination and works whom we have already regisclose cross-questioning of the out-oftered at our Labour Bureau, we find that at least sixty per cent are country folk-men, women, boys, and girls, who have left their homes in the counties to come up to town in the

hope of bettering themselves. They are in no sense of the word Cockneys, and they represent, not the dregs of the country, but rather its brighter and more adventurous spirits, who have boldly tried to make their way in new and uncongenial spheres, and have terribly come to grief. Of thirty cases, selected haphazard, in the various shelters during the week ending July 5, 1890, twenty-two country-born, sixteen were men who had come up a long time ago, but do not ever seem to have settled to regular employ, and four were old military

men.

were

Of sixty cases examined into the fortnight ending August 2, fortyat the bureau and shelters during two were country people, twenty-six men who had been in London for various periods ranging from six months to four years, nine were lads under eighteen who had run away from home and come up to town, while four were ex-military. Of eighty-five cases of dossers who were spoken to at night when they slept in the streets, sixty-three were country people. A very small proportion of the genuine homeless out-of-works

are Londoners bred and born."

General Booth regards these as not unpromising material for his farm colony; but we should much prefer that the poor-law got its hands upon them, and returned them to their native parishes and the care of the ratepayers. Now that the counties have got local government, it is to be hoped that one of the first subjects to which their councils will turn their attention will be the condition of

rural labour, and the revival of local, and especially village, industries, which would do much more than even General Booth's schemes to thin the population of the slums of great cities, and check the migration from country to town. We fear, from General Booth's reports, that the Government itself is a heavy contributor to the list of the unemployed, since the shortservice system has turned loose so large a number of men whose working habits have been unsettled by military service, and whose steadiness and aptitude for hard work has not been increased by a short sojourn in the ranks. In all these cases the State owes a duty to society which, if the latter is to engage seriously in the problem of dealing with city destitution, Government on its side cannot well continue to ig

nore.

It will be an achievement worthy of the end of the century if, before

it close, we have made a decided step towards solving this problem of the slums, which is the blackest spot upon our boasted civilisation. How far and to what extent the course which General Booth has marked out may be effectual, it would be presumptuous to say; but we have reasonable grounds for anticipating that if it is followed up in the same spirit in which it has been undertaken, it must be productive of good results. The fact that he has interested in his efforts large and influential classes, who have not previously been identified with philanthropic objects, and whose sympathies cannot be supposed to be very warmly connected with the Salvation Army as a purely religious organisation, is indicative of an anxious desire to see some wide and general undertaking set at work in behalf of the slums certainly a healthy sign of public feeling upon the subject.

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THERE had been another Deluge -of printer's ink and water-and the Ark was resting on Mount Blank. I stood and waited to see the inmates come forth. Presently the door opened, a broad plank was shoved out, and John Inglesant appeared, with Robert Elsmere clinging to his arm. He had a bass viol under his other arm. He was quite calm, and looked as if he had made up his mind to walk straight on to the very end of the earth, and then to topple over off the edge into space. He had done this once before. had a way of knocking about among men and manners, sometimes playing the lute, sometimes double dummy with popes and potentates, even acting the part of both dummies himself; and he intended to change his costume and his religion with each new country en passant.

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Robert was looking very wishywashy in the face after the long voyage, and very weak about the knees. This came from having been so long cramped up in different attitudes, first kneeling upon one knee and then upon the other, and finally kneeling upon no knees at all. I felt really sorry for the poor fellow, for he looked "a bit sick." Is that the right expression? As they passed me, I caught the words "higher ethics and "anity," but whether the latter meant Christianity or inanity I had no means of knowing. I didn't care to follow them, so I turned to see "the next article."

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This proved to be "Ideala," accompanied by "Dean Maitland." I recognised him at once-not by his voice but by his silence. It was unbroken. "Ideala" was in her velvet and diamonds, which she had worn during the voyage. She had had the hippopotamus and three very dirty city arabs sitting on her knee all the way; but she was none the worse for that, bless you! and her velvet gown was not very much rumpled. As they passed I heard her reminding the Dean of his having once rowed her on the lake at her uncle Lord Idellande Nobell's lovely place in Bicepsshire, and how in picking waterlilies to stick in her hair, he had all but upset the boat. But never a word in response could she get from the Dean. Then she began telling him of a new plan she and Lorrimer (how she rolled her r's) had for putting London to rights; she was to do all the dusting and cleaning; while he was to undertake the lamp-lighting, and to write the sanitary reports. "The work," she said, "was too much for one, and not quite enough for two." All this while you might have heard a pin drop, the Dean's silence was so complete. I did not care to follow them, for the conversation was SO very onesided.

On turning again towards the Ark, I saw "Mr Isaacs stagger out with a young lady on his back. She had jumped up just as he was about to offer his arm to "dear Lady Disdain." The girl was one

of old Dr Cupid's "troublesome daughters," either Joan or Esther or Nellie or Nancy. They were all much alike; a shock-not of surprise but of red hair ran through the family, rippling laughter was hereditary, and a long line of broken boot-lace without a tag had come down since the Conquest. This one had the shockiest shock, the ripplingist laugh, the untaggiest boot-lace, so it must have been Nancy. The clumsy country-made boots could not disguise the delicate Arab arch of her instep, and of course she had a brother called Jack and a pug called Jill.

She was generally sitting either on the top of a garden-wall or on a baronet's back. Mr Isaacs wasn't even a knight, but she had been so long cooped up that any shoulder, if it were broad enough, would do to perch on. "" 'Child," said Mr Isaacs, in a tone full of deep passion-he was very angry

-"get down at once!" "I can't, unless Jack comes to take me down, for my boot-laces are untied and I should trip; and you can't think how funny my red hair looks beside your black locks-dash of the tar-brush in them, eh?" Mr Isaacs gave vent to a low Asiatic grunt, which sounded like "kkhh," and passed on with his fair burden. The next couple who emerged attracted some notice, and took up a great deal of room on the plank. A large-limbed simpering female was swaying to and fro in a sort of chair slung on poles, a Hindoo bearer at each end. A well-known voice seemed to say, "But that's another story," and by that same token I knew my lady at once as the heroine of many an untold "plain unvarnished"—which her name it is Ginevra Rickshaw, wife of Rawton Rickshaw, deputy assistant

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sometimes a large ugly red one of government; had her white finger on the pulse-a great thudding pulse it was too-of society, and when its temperature rose to 106 decimal point 8, Ginevra would call for ice, shut herself up, and be "darwaza bund hai,” which we all know means "not at home." She was now on her way to Europe for repairs. Beside her sedan walked good "Sir Percival" "with aimless feet." He had just handed Tract XC. to her, and was speeding away, intent on further distribution, when Bootles, of Bootles' Horse-no, not Horse, "Baby" called out, "I say, old chappie, don't do us out of the other 89." Bootles had kept an eye full of fatherly compassion on Mrs Rawton Rickshaw ever since they left Simla. He was always refusing locks of her hair and trifles of that sort, and as they passed he was saying in a tone of friendly remonstrance, "Pon my word, Mrs Wickshaw, if you go giving locks of hair to every fellow in the wegiment, you'll have to get a wig soon, and I shall feel it my dooty to wite to poor old Wawton.' "Oh! don't remind me of my old bête noire 3000 miles away, wailed Ginevra. "Not half a yard away, madam!" roared the hind Hindoo dropping the pole and tearing off his turban he disclosed the bald head and infuriated visage of Rawton Rickshaw. He had

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followed his wife in disguise from Simla. I left him and the benevolent Bootles to extricate the limp and hapless Ginevra from a mass of broken bamboo, tattered gauze, and miscellaneous débris. "Ill Tales from the Plain," said I, and Echo answered, “rotten rickshaws."

And now a hot blast as from an oven issued from the Ark, and "She "" stepped out, led by the Master of Ballantrae. She had quite got over her cremation, and was as fresh as paint, attired in a splendid mummy-case made of rich and costly materials, open at the feet to admit of shuffling along. She was fanning herself with the lobes of her own ears, which four thousand years of listening underground in the tropics to what was being said above-ground in the temperate zone had somewhat developed. The Master-that Master of Arts and of Fascinations— had already got her well into his toils, and was cajoling her into a project for sacking her own treasury, and urging her to fly with him to his palace on the Isthmus of Darien. Little did she guess that at that moment he had a pitch-plaster in his pocket ready to clap over her already flattened Egyptian nose and mouth; and a letter ready to post, offering Her, She-or She, Her, which is it? to the keeping of the British Museum. In her hand she had several palimpsests covered with prophecies, which must be fulfilled one after the other, as each successive layer of hieroglyphic should yield to the scraper's tool. The Master purposed to act scraper; and he was fully qualified for the post. I didn't think it was worth while to follow them. I knew they must end by burying each other alive-somewhere.

And now "Chris" came lightly

down the plank, followed by "The Wizard's Son," "the Second Son," and a "Son of the Soil." She was engaged to the first, married to the second, and had been either engaged or married to the third. It was a little confusing, and they all seemed to feel it so. There was some difficulty as to the order of precedence, but it was all amicably settled at last, and they filed past all speaking at once. I fancied Chris looked just a little bored, and as if she should have liked the introduction of a new element; but that may have been fancy.

Just then there was a disturbance at the door owing to a galvanic battery which "Diana of the Crossways" would carry, and which had electrified several persons by accident. She came down cracking nuts with her ivory teeth; she was always cracking nuts, very hard ones, and she expected her friends to do the same.

Beside

her walked that very nice American who does business for both the firms of Howells and James. I can't remember his name, "but you know who I mean." He had with him an immense assortment (dry goods?) of motives-his own and other people's-which he was analysing with as much care as if it had been milk from a suspected dairy. Years spent in Venetian palazzas and "Borston" drawingrooms had quickened his perceptions to a sort of divine intuition. He could differentiate to the point of attenuation the exact significance of a suppressed sneeze and of a half-suppressed yawn; and, like a true American, he could "do the outside edge" on the surface ice of modern hyper-refined society.

He had also a new umbrella. Diana was armed with a broom with which to sweep the crossways when she should reach them. they stepped down, she glanced

As

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