in his "Joe tells me if so be as the young eye, woman he is after is agreeable to take him-that he intends making over this 501. debt to her. it's her you'll have to deal with maybe."

So

A flush of annoyance rose to Simmonds' cheek. "I'd far liever settle the business with you or your son. Women folks are often so unreasonablelike in business matters."

Pegram rose from his seat, and walked towards the window. The back parlours of the two shops. had projecting bow windows, and commanded a view of each other. Pegram drew aside the curtain of the Simmonds' window, and there, in the bow window of his own parlour, were visible the Romeo and Juliet of the rival houses. Romeo's

arm was around Juliet's waist, and Juliet's head was on Romeo's shoulder, and, like many people in similar circumstances, they were too engrossed in each other to remember that they had omitted to draw down the window-blind, and that the next-door parlour window commanded a view of theirs.

Pegram pointed to the pair with a quiet chuckle. "I saw what was a-coming," he said; "weil, neighbour, that's the young woman to whom you owe the 501.; do you think you'll find her so desperate unreasonable to deal with?"

Mr. Simmonds, though convalescent, was still weak from his illness; a tear started to his eye as he held out his hand to his former foe.

"I-I should wish all former unpleasantness between us forgot," he said, "I've been a fool I believe."

the shops, and an announcement set up over the doors that "Pegram and Simmonds, Grocers and Oilmen," were prepared to cater for the neighbourhood.

It is probable that old Pegram's prediction concerning the profits likely to result from this union. of businesses was amply fulfilled, as there was always an air of prosperity about the establishment; and the young wife of the proprietor looked bright and cheerful, despite the cares which the advent of many rosy-cheeked urchins might have been supposed to entail. Certainly, Dolly had the aid of her mother in caring for (and the neighbours said "spoiling ") her pretty little ones; for the Simmonds' still resided in their part of the joint premises, and had a great deal of "connection" with "the shop next door."

LUCY HARDY.

Liverpool's

greatest Problem.

more inspiring than in the pages which tell of the efforts of her citizens for the children of the poor. The Mersey city's extraordinary and unparallelled excess of indigent, unemployed and destitute children is felt to be her greatest social problem. Greater than the need of her vast seafaring population is that of the legions of unowned, unfed, and orphan children of her shiftless, migratory, non-industrial poor. see these hapless lads and girls at every turn, a dark and sordid fringe to the stately public buildings and busy promenades of the city, an ever-present and sinister contrast to the wealth and culture of which they are the sombre background.

We

Beyond any other town in the kingdom, Liverpool is burdened with a juvenile class for whom no place is found in her industrial and commercial system. The streets are their home, and, like the sparrows, many of them live from day

to day on scraps of casual food, knowing and heeding nothing of to-morrow's bread.

Economic Causes.

of her poor.

Liverpool, unlike her huge neighbouring Lancashire towns has no manufacturing industries for the children We shall look in vain in Liverpool for the many square miles of cottage homes which in Manchester and the Yorkshire industrial towns are inhabited by a regular wage-earning class. No mills or factories employ child labour by the thousands. Precarious street trades are almost the only vocation of the poorest children of the seaport.

Some of these aspects of darker Liverpool have already come before us. A tour of lodginghouse Liverpool, with its twenty-thousand licensed tenements; a visit to the North End, the South, or the Riverside, would tell us still more of the "children's quarters" and the hapless cellar-life and other untoward conditions in which tens of thousands are born and bred.

Ameliorative Agencies.

A Sunday in Liverpool may be profitably spent at some of the homes, shelters, refuges and schools established for such children. We may there see for ourselves how earnestly many of the City's most honoured philanthropists in the past have given themselves to the work of child reclamation, and how munificently the Liverpool of to-day is continuing and extending a memorable and much honoured work. The names of Hamilton Thom, Balfour, Nugent, Lundie and Lockhart in the past, and those of Canon Lester, Charles Garrett, Samuel Smith, Father Berry and Mrs. Birt of to-day are among the goodly company.

The more special and exceptional institutions for poor children, such as the homes and trainingschools which tend the lives of the little ones on the larger scale, are all that can be noticed in any detail within the scope of these papers. On the other hand, the great and all-important work which is being done for children in connexion with the ordinary Sunday-schools throughout Liverpool may well be noticed as occasion offers. The weekly Sunday-school obtains in not a few cases very great importance in numbers as well as influence. It accomplishes a work which by no means ends with the Sunday, but is comparable in some important respects with that of the homes.

Southern

Let us first take our steps to Southern Liverpool Liverpool. Here is the earliest reThe Domestic corded scene of associated religious Mission. effort for the welfare of the city poor. Here in Toxteth was one of the first of the many springs and fountains which have refreshed the lives of the neglected and the outcast.

com

The Liverpool Domestic Mission was menced in Toxteth Park in the year 1836. The names of Rathbone and Holt-familiar to Liverpool ears as household words-of Thom, Martineau and Blanco White, are remembered as of the founders of a work which endures and strengthens with the years. The visitor to the mission-house

at Mill Street receives a cordial welcome at the fine new buildings so admirably equipped as the headquarters of the work. Here and at Beaufort Street on Sunday we find hundreds of children in the class-rooms and at the children's service. The calendar of the many useful agencies maintained throughout the week assures us that to-day, as in the beginning, the Liverpool Domestic Mission is a ministry for the poor, with practical aims that bring new life to the homes of the neglected. Of late years the mission has been extended to the north end of Liverpool.

But we must not stay at Toxteth. The great schools and homes of the type we are in search of will be found in Eastern Liverpool and elsewhere.

living for fifty years day by day amongst the very poor with whom he had thrown in his lot. Toxteth is indeed rich in memories of past and present pastors and evangelists. The names of Garrett and Berry, Lockhart and Dobson, are fresh and fragrant in the old township.

Sunday at Kirkdale.

The

Kirkdale Industrial Ragged Schools and Homes are the next to open their hospitable doors, that we may see how their Sunday is spent. Here Liverpool shows us, on the largest scale, how the care of the city's homeless children is undertaken solely by voluntary effort. That which Canon Postance did for the children of Toxteth, during fifty years of personal labour, Canon Major Lester has succeeded in doing at Kirkdale on a scale as yet unparalleled in the city's annals.

In company with the Canon we make the tour of the schools and homes. We see for ourselves the seven hundred children who have been taken from the city's whirlpool of poverty and mendicity into a godly home, where they are taught a useful handicraft. We visit the twenty-six separate houses for boys and girls, and note in the manner and speech of the little ones the signs of a newlyfound home-life. The religious teaching is such as to make Sunday the happiest day of the week. In the evening there are no less than four children's

services.

Kirkdale is, in more ways than one, a centre for the training of Liverpool children; Canon Lester is vicar of the parish. In the cathedrallike church of St. Mary's, and the daughter church of St. Lawrence, we find between two and three thousand persons at public worship on Sunday evening. In the Sunday-schools there are no less than 2600 children in regular attendance.

Caron Lester's

To

Such are some of the results of forty Forty Years. years of strenuous work for the children of Kirkdale. At the beginning of that period Kirkdale numbered a population of 7000, and hundreds of starving and almost naked children were wandering about the streets. day Kirkdale numbers 60,000 souls. Nowhere in Liverpool does self-sacrificing and voluntary Christian effort more delight the eye of the visitor, and awaken his goodwill and God-speed to the workers. There is scarcely a child in Kirkdale by whom Canon Lester is not known and loved, and as he walks through the streets they run to receive from him the cheery look and kindly word which never fails them.

pool's philanthropic enter

prises, the conception of a home of this character for the seaport city was that of the late Mr. Alexander Balfour. His, too, was the inspiring energy which carried others with him and gave the scheme a practicable shape.

It is now twenty-two years since Mr. Balfour, a Liverpool citizen, was moved to long contemplated action for

Emigrants.

After twenty-three years' experience Youthful of this system of child emigration, Mrs. Birt and her colleagues are satisfied that the provision of an outlet to Canada, with distributing homes to receive the children on their arrival, is the best way of helping onwards in life boys and girls whom it is almost impossible to find places for in Liverpool.

Some of the gravest difficulties of home employment amid the old surroundings have already been indicated. Beset by unprincipled parents, who tempt them to steal from their employers and come back to their old haunts, their place in Liverpool would in the great majority of cases be a hopeless one, and the Home become a danger rather than a blessing.

"Canada," says Mrs. Birt, in answer to our inquiry, "has indeed proved a land of promise to our rescued little ones. The change from the slum-cellars of Liverpool is almost unspeakable.

the drift children which swarmed in the streets, by witnessing a peculiarly painful case of five children deserted by their parents and thrown upon the mercy of the streets. He called upon Miss Macpherson, and heard from her and her sister, Mrs. Birt, the story of the successful homes for training East London destitute children for life in Canada. He at once invited Mrs. Birt to Liverpool, and at a meeting of half-a-dozen friends, the example of the London homes was discussed. With the aid of Mr. Samuel Smith, M.P., Mr. Stephen Williamson, and other tried workers, the Myrtle Street sheltering homes, with Mrs. Birt as superintendent, came into existence as the outcome of the Conference. Among the many gracious and devoted lady helpers who became associated from the first with the work was Mrs. Stephen Williamson, daughter of Dr. Guthrie, one of the honoured pioneers of ragged schools.

One little girl of a party recently sent from Myrtle Street, as they neared the green and sunny shores of the Dominion, exclaimed to the clergyman in charge, "Oh, Dr. Lundie! Isn't this heaven we're coming to!" They had just before been singing the hymn of "a land of pure delight," and of the fields that "stand dressed in living green."

These little inThe Myrtle mates of the

Children's

Sunday.

Sheltering Home at Myrtle Street help to brighten the Liverpool Sunday. In the morning we may see a large detachment of them at St. Luke's, Bold Street, where a

Afternoon services which are now common in Liverpool, or assisting at one of the Sunday-school services for children which are an equally notable feature of the Liverpool Sunday.

Hall.

The external beneficences of the At St. George's Homes in Liverpool itself are among the most pleasing sights the visitor can look upon in this city of street arabs. Every Christmas Eve Mrs. Birt is enabled to give one of the largest dinner parties on record. Five thousand ragged shoeless waifs sit down in detachments to an ample Christmas dinner. To hear the full choir of voices, singing to the stirring strains of the great organ the juvenile hymn "Once in royal David's city," is a pathetic experience not easily forgotten.

Catholic Children.

Happily the child charities of LiverThe Roman pool are as numerous as the various faiths professed in a city of so many races and peoples. The Roman Catholic population of the city amounts to one-third of the whole, and by common consent its leaders take a worthy and admirable part in the great social movements which seek the benefit of the poor. In the Temperance movement they have long been the most prominent leaders, and in the more special efforts of late years for the rescue of poor destitute lads and girls, they have nobly responded to the kindred work which has been set on foot at Kirkdale, Myrtle Street, and e' ewhere.

the breach some fifty years since, and established a Boys' Refuge. Of late years he has had an earnest and worthy disciple in Father Berry, who is now one of the best-known boys' friends and social reformers in the Mersey city.

He has now four separate institutions for the necessitous boys of Liverpool. There is a night shelter for penniless boys in Bute Street a house for street-trading boys in Everton Crescent, another for working boys in Shaw Street, and a fourth for training boys in Bute Street. A graduated course, taking up the boy at the stage of starvation and helplessness, and carrying him on to the position of a skilled worker, is the ideal of the promoter, and is carried out with a success which has given him a high place in the esteem of his fellow-citizens of all faiths. No boy, whatever his reputed creed may be, is refused admission to the home if his case is of a satisfactory and deserving nature. In order that no charge of proselytism should be incurred, the non-Catholics are transferred to an institution of their own faith the following morning. The home, accordingly, receives support from many well-known non-Catholics of the city as well as from the Roman Catholic communions.