Some of the poor people recognised me and cheered as I drove down, and I heard many words of admiration of my Ratcliff child as we entered the enclosure, "She looks like a princess," said one woman, admiringly. It is quite true that this child of the people did infinite credit to her class as well as to her training; for she had the same modest dignity of manner in whatever company she was.

as pleased to be with her mother in her little East-End home as if she had no knowledge of anything different; whilst some friends of mine with whom she rode in the "Row," and who had known of her first as a little nurse in the ward, were absolutely staggered by her good horsemanship and quiet acceptance of all that they thought must startle her as new and strange in the life of the West-End.

We visited some parts of France and Italy on our way back to Naples, and then Marian began her serious studies under a professor, for she had elected to study for the medical profession.

I was greatly pleased by her application, and so was her master. Not even the Carnival could tempt her away for long from her Greek and Latin, and I was sometimes obliged to insist upon her having some recreation; but yet I felt that she had no enthusiasm for her future profession. "I shall be able to make money for my mother," she would say calmly, "so I mean to work hard; besides, of course I must be selfdependent some day." and she certainly did work hard; but like the plans of many girls, hers were altered before long; and in July, 1876, she married an Italian gentleman, a great friend of mine.

I returned to England, to prepare for leaving Europe.

The new Hospital was built, but not yet ready for habitation. Before I left, and as a parting gift to it, I placed in the hall a beautiful tablet to my husband's memory, executed in the style of the ornamentation of San Marco in Venice, which had particularly attracted his admiration. The Secretary and I went over the new and empty building together. We lingered lovingly over each little detail, even to the gnarled markings on the massive and polished wooden doors. It seemed so strange to stand in that beautiful new place, and to think of the once struggling life of the little old Hospital; strange too, to think that a new sort of life-a life utterly ignorant or forgetful of all that had made this place what it was, would soon be pouring through the passages where now our footsteps echoed. As we stood there together, I felt that, for the nonce, this eldest daughter of my hopes and fears belonged equally to us, but that she was decked for her bridal; and that, even as I had parted but a

little while before with the right of being equal in my Marian's heart with the man who had won it, so I was about to surrender the future Hospital to this friend of mine, for that he had won the right to call it his, by the self-denying devotion and the untiring work of brain and hand of which this building was the result. There was a pang in the thought that the time would come when our very names would be forgotten by those who would dwell within these walls, and pass to and fro through these passages; but it was momentary, for I knew that as long as that building stood, so long would the tablet in the hall tell of the one to whom that Hospital would be a monument, of one without whose vivifying touch we two should never have awakened to the happiness that is to be found in living for an idea, even if the effort to express it in action be fraught with sorrow and disappointment.

CHAPTER VII.

NINE years passed between the time that I ceased to live in the East-End and my return to my old haunts. I came back no longer able to give freely as we once had given—not able, indeed, to give at all. I had no intention of fixing my abode amongst the homes of those whose poverty would cry to me in vain, neither did I come with any hope of reviving the happiness that once seemed to me a part of the EastEnd. I had seen and learnt much during those years, and felt so unlike the woman who had lived in the old Hospital, that I seemed to myself like a ghost revisiting its home on earth.

Mrs.

But the people recognised me, and welcomed me back with effusion, caring seemingly but little as to my having nought but friendship to bestow on them; nay, some even spent unostentatiously out of their little store for me. Hurley, Jimmy's mother, met me in the street, and wept for joy, saying she had thought I was dead, and told me that her husband was still in the same employment that Mr. Heckford had got for him; and when I went to her home, her little grandchild welcomed me, as if he had known me all his life, as the Mrs. Heckford of "Uncle Jimmy's Hospital," in the collecting box of which he often deposited his farthings, in token of gratitude for past kindness to an uncle he never saw. The pretty child whom I had taken to Belgium, returning after eight years' absence, had reclaimed her mother, and, forgetting her past neglect, was thoughtful of her least want, whilst working hard and refusing good places, so as not to lose the beneficial influence she had acquired over her ;-poor Jane was steady and hard-working-a well

spoken, decent girl, although her mother was as bad as ever. Maria Darby was happily married to a man in a station above that of her parents-but on good terms with the old people. Jessie, Theresa, and Emma were still nurses, although not at the Children's Hospital. As soon as it was known that I was in the East-End once more, many of those even, whom I had forgotten recalled themselves to my remembrance, and I found Mr. Heckford's memory still fresh in numbers of poor homes.

Where, then, is the ingratitude of the poor one so often. hears of? These poor people watered the withered garden of my happy East-End memories with their gratitude, until they made it green again, and won me to settle amongst them, and work amongst them and with them once more.

I found the poverty more grinding, the rents higher, the work less, and the drunkenness so much diminished that where once a sober man was a man I remembered with pleasure, so a confirmed drunkard is now a man I remember with pain. There is drunkenness, alas! the offspring as well as the parent of wretchedness; but it is a cruel injustice to say that the bitter want now prevalent in the East-End is generally the result of drink,-for, indeed, it is not!

I will end my tale with the end of a life I mentioned at its beginning, that of Mr. L., the husband of my friend of the Wapping Cholera Hospital, a man of the type that is now gradually dying out. I found him wasted and unable to work, cruel to his wife as ever, and as ever respectful and even affectionate to me. Still working at early morning and far into the night, the woman earned a scanty pittance for herself and her younger children. Daniel was happily married, and was doing well; he showed me his firstborn with pride. His one idea appeared to be to make his wife happy, and certainly she seemed so. He gave all his earnings to her, and took next to nothing for himself. To this there was, perhaps, one drawback: he could not help his mother; although, in truth, helping her meant helping his father, and the young fellow openly objected to doing that. My old cholera patient, Johnny, was also married; but, like most men in the East-End, was often out of work, and living from hand to mouth. Mary, the eldest girl, was working hard for slender wages, to help her mother; and a little girl, Henrietta, seemed to have taken the place of the Mary I had left so many years before. There were two little boys, but they both died soon after my return; and father and mother grieved sadly for them: but even this trial had no effect on the man. At last he was confined to bed; but one night, in a fit of passion, staggered to his feet, and, seizing a bottle, threatened

to dash his wife's brains on the hearth. She fell on her knees. "It seemed as though I could say nothing to him, ma'am," she said; "but I looked in his face and said, 'Oh, Dan, what a wicked man you must be to say that to me, as have worked for you these many years.'

He threw the bottle into a corner, and lay down again whilst she resumed her work. What a story of grinding poverty does this not tell! "But I couldn't help a-crying to myself, ma'am," she told me, "for to think of how cruel he were; when all at once he says, a looking at me, 'You're a-crying, Henneretta.' 'Yes,' says I, 'I may well cry, Dan;' and with that he says, 'Well, I've been a bad man, and may God forgive me, and a bad husband to you. I'll go into the Infirmary to-morrow: get an order for me and get rid of me.'" It was the best thing for him to do, for they were nearly starving; but he had continually refused to go till that evening. She got the order, and he went; but when he knew he was dying, he crawled home. "I couldn't die happy in that place," he said in explanation. "It ain't a place no one can think in,—with no one to talk of a better life to you ;-I feel I can die happy here." He lived for a fortnight-a fortnight of almost constant sleeplessness, but of never-varying gentleness and patience. He would ask those who went to see him to read to him from the Bible, and seemed grateful for the most trifling service rendered by his wife. "He died a good man at last," she said to me. "He were quite happy at the last, and ready to go: yes, he were a thorough good man at last." I thought of her words spoken long years before, as she sat stitching by the side of her new-born baby, "The Lord makes us able to bear it." She had borne her burden patiently, and at last had reached the goal.

To those who have followed me thus far, I must now bid good-bye; but ere they close the book, let me beg of them, if it has interested them for a moment, or if any of the roughly executed portraits I have sketched have made some pleasing impression on their minds, to remember, when thinking of that great poverty-stricken quarter of London-which is, in itself, a vast city,- that one man and woman, at least, found it to be a mine, from the rugged ore of which much pure gold could be extracted, even in a few short years, and by most inexperienced labour; and to reflect whether such a mine is not worth working in, and whether, by taking thought, it may not be possible so to work it, as for the yield to be greater and the cost of obtaining it less than was the case in that small excavation into the hidden depths of East-End Romance, called "The East London Hospital for Children." SARAH HECKFORD.

CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS.

THE title have

HE title I have selected, "Christian Schools," is, perhaps, a little misleading, and therefore I ought at the outset to explain that by the term I do not mean various schools of "religious thought" within the Christian Church, but schools for giving the children who attend the London Board Schools definite Church teaching. If, as an Irishman, I might be allowed an "Hibernianism," I would call them "Sunday School," held upon a week-day; or, to be more accurate, held upon a week-night, and particulars of which it is the object of this paper to explain.

I am aware also that the term "Christian" Schools might appear to some to be rather pretentious, or, perhaps, a little aggressive. Let me therefore say at once that it is not intended to convey the idea that the Board Schools teach Heathenism, Mahomedism, or Paganism; but the term would be better understood as the opposite of Secular Schools. I am, however, free to confess that the title has never exactly commended itself to me, and if any other were suggested I should be pleased to hear it. But whilst we do not for a moment make any charge against the Board Schools for what they teach, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that there is something very important they do not teach, and from the very nature of their charter, it would be impossible for them to teach,-definite doctrine such as would satisfy either the Church on the one hand, or any well-organised body of Nonconformists on the other. Moderate we may all be in our teaching, and tolerant we should all be towards the views of others; but simply " colorless "as the expression is, no real man, or body of men can be, either in politics or in religion. Now, there are certain facts we have to look in the face. As far as my memory serves me, it is between eighteen and twenty years since the "School-board" system was established in this country, and education placed on a National basis; and in order to show the vast proportions this organisation has attained, I will quote one statement derived from the Annual Budget presented by the Finance Committee of the London School Board at their meeting in which it was stated that over one million one hundred thousand pounds were required in order to enable the Board to satisfy liabilities up to the 25th of March, and to meet estimated liabilities up to March, 1886: and though it is true that these