The effect was instantaneous. Strangely attired though he might be the Admiral spoke as one having authority; an authority which the boys dared not dispute. They stopped in their flight. Then in obedience to his gesture they approached him timidly, shuffled with their feet, and looked shamefacedly down as they stood in an orderly row, holding their squirts well behind their backs.

"When," began the Admiral after a brief but withering survey, “when I find one small boy engaged in a piece of mischief and five larger boys looking on, I find it invariably the case that the onlookers are the instigators.

It is

a mean and cowardly thing to make others do what you dare not do yourselves. Stand still!"

The shuffling of feet ceased and the boys assumed a military correctness of attitude that would have rejoiced Mr. Lauriston, had he been there to see. One or two actually dropped their squirts in the grass behind them. "Never do in a person's absence what you would not do before them," pursued the Admiral, who was quite in his element. He enunciated this principle, so entirely subversive of all schoolboy, indeed of all human practice, with an air of finality that impressed his impromptu form to its discomfort. "What have you got there?" he demanded of the biggest boy, who produced his squirt and meekly surrendered it. "I will consider the question of its retention at the end of the hour." The Admiral instinctively put out his hand to place the article on his desk, but quickly remembered himself and put it into his pocket. A slight fizz caused a quickly suppressed grin to flit across the portentously vacuous face of the late owner. His squirt had leaked and extinguished the Admiral's still glowing pipe. The Ad

miral was aware of it, but nothing would have induced him to betray his knowledge at this moment. Nevertheless he was sufficiently recalled to actual fact to remember that he was not in any real official capacity at present. His lecture was commendably brief, winding up with"Must never occur again. You may go."

"Please teacher-" The biggest boy lingered. The Admiral's eye hardened; but the hour was over and the confiscated squirt was restored. The five culprits walked away with unwonted piety of aspect.

Little Jan Miles, however, stayed; he had not quite grasped the enormity of his offence and he had an explanation to offer. The Admiral's sternness had vanished with the departure of his class. The pipe was extracted and refilled, a match was struck, and then he very kindly asked the boy what he wanted. Jan explained that he didn't want to put in pigs really. The Admiral did not at first see that he had to deal with the artistic temperament. which is not recognized at our public schools. When Jan further explained, however, that his instinct had been to put in "a man" the Admiral realized it. He was not a schoolmaster at the moment, and in his leisure he painted himself. So he began to talk to the boy on the subject of the damaged sketch. From criticism he too proceeded to action, a rare feat in a critic, who is usually better pleased with explaining the deficiencies of his victim than with showing how it should be done. As a critic he should have talked; but as a schoolmaster he had the instinct of the fair copy.

When Doris returned with a hooked stick she found her stool occupied and a fresh sketch of the tower being rapidly executed by a male stranger, while a small boy looked on in round-eyed admiration. The situation baffled her.

The exclamation "Oh!" did not seem wholly adequate, but fortunately the Admiral looked up. He saw the evidently rightful proprietor; she seemed becomingly embarrassed.

"I beg your pardon," he said getting up and bowing. "But some boys spoilt your sketch, and I was trying to put it right before you came back. This is the culprit, but don't be too hard on him; it wasn't altogether his fault." He showed her the original with the addition of ten and a half crimson pigs. He flowed on glibly in explanation, saying that he had meant to leave her a sketch in the same condition as her own, and asked if she would have discovered the change. The small boy also came to the rescue by expressing admiration of the stranger's feat, and Doris began to feel less alarmed. Then the Admiral dismissed the cause of the introduction with a pat on the head and a shilling to buy himself a box of paints. She ventured to remark that he must be very fond of children.

"I am a schoolmaster," said the Admiral. Perhaps the answer was ambiguous, but she did not think so.

"Oh, that is such a noble career," she said warmly. It was a new idea to the Admiral, but he received it with a docility which proved that, unlike most of his brother pedagogues, he was still capable of learning.

"You might have had everything broken." He evaded her opening, from modesty as she thought, so she did not press the point but told him instead how it was that she had had to leave her easel defenceless. She related the tale of the teacup's loss and explained its importance in the set with a solemnity that delighted the Admiral. He insisted on recovering the heirloom and after some difficulty succeeded in fishing it up with the hooked stick.

By now it was a quarter to one and Macmillan's Magazine.

luncheon was at half-past. The Admiral helped her to collect her belongings, and firmly appropriated the easel and the camp-stool. "You'll want morning light to finish it," he said, "or you'll miss all those fine shadows."

Doris guilelessly confessed her intention of returning next day, and the Admiral was satisfied. He walked beside her conversing on the suitable subjects for sketches that the neighborhood supplied. She acquiesced in his escort, a little shocked but not illpleased. After all he was a schoolmaster and Doris had ideals. Next to a clergyman, as the instructor of souls, she ranked the instructor of youth; she had never had any intimate acquaintance with either. Their roads eventually parted shortly before they reached the camp.

For the rest of the way the easel and camp-stool seemed unusually heavy to Doris. She was surprised at suddenly meeting Cicely. Cicely was also surprised; she was carrying a fishing-basket and a rug and that was all. "Have you been sketching, dear?" enquired the younger Miss Neave quickly. However, before Doris could reply she vanished behind a bush to emerge with an addition to her burdens, a rod neatly packed in its case. "I'm so glad to meet you," she pursued hurriedly; "we'll keep each other company in being late." She cast a regretful look behind her, for the bait-tin still lay in its hiding-place; but it would never do to pick that up now. So she began gaily to question the unsuspecting Doris, who was full of her adventure.

"You met one of the house-boat? What fun!" said Cicely. "You must tell me all about it when we go out for a row. Only don't tell the others just yet; I want to hear it all first; it'll be so much nicer."

There are two sides from which the question of the poor may be approached -the side of the theorizer and that of the man who speaks from experience. Of course the question looks different from one side and the other. The man who views it from book knowledge and from general considerations is apt to see the question in terms of an abstract problem; for him it is a matter of forces, presenting themselves more or less perfectly as mental conceptions, which can be dealt with like the a and y of a sum in algebra or the formulæ in a handbook of chemistry. He often takes a wide view; he sees causes in operation and effects which must follow, and he is convinced that his theory is right. What he too seldom sees, even if he is a man of sympathy, is the drama of the problem; he fails to realize that his theory concerns the most highly developed form of living matter, and that the terms of the problem are not merely statistical and economic, but vital in the fullest sense of that word. Anguish and aspiration, passion, affection, ennoblement, degradation, with every attribute of mind, heart and soul -these, each and all, distinguish the quick human being from the dead array of figures. It is this force of life, this tragedy and comedy, this human movement which governs the whole question, that makes the dry, abstract conclusions of the theorizer look so futile and inept to the man whose knowledge comes from first-hand experience.

But if it is true that the people with theories are too often people who have missed the essence of the whole matter, it is also true that the man whose knowledge is of experience only is apt to be carried away by sympathy and indignation, to "lose his head" at the sight of individual suffering and unde

served want, and to forget the eternal and inexorable forces which are working behind these examples of "the world's wrong." Then it is easy enough to demand measures of immediate alleviation which will prove impossible in application or do more harm than good.

I think people who want to help the cause of the poor should avoid the extreme on each side; they should not be unduly daunted by academic theories, or believe that abstract considerations and groups of figures can solve a problem which has the whole of human nature in it; and they should not waste their energy in merely denouncing evils and injustices of which some are inherent in the scheme of the universe; they should busy themselves in remedying the others. For this reason I do not propose in this article either to appeal to statistics or to accuse any class of people or any British Government of being deliberate and malevolent oppressors.

Almost every one who has given thought to the subject agrees that the great mass of the poor in this country are divisible into three classes. First, there are those who are in steady employment at a fair wage, and who, though they can never afford for themselves the luxuries or the comforts of the wealthy, are able to make some provision for old age and for times of stress due to sickness, exceptionally slack trade, and so forth. Secondly, there are those whose employment is more or less unstable, it may be from the circumstances of their occupation, or it may be from faults of temperament, or lack of skill or application, or want of opportunity in early years. This class contains a great number of people who are neither good nor bad,

whom it would be unjust to treat as hopeless cases, but who are often enemies to themselves and their families. There are others who, in their misfortunes, are almost entirely the victims of economic conditions. Thirdly, there are those who are inherently bad or who have "gone under" beyond social redemption. It is this class which has affixed to "the poor" as a whole almost every stigma that has ever been unjustly attached to them.

There is as much self-respect-I believe there is more to be found in the first of these classes as in any in the country. They preserve, too, the best national traditions of family life. They do not want charity-in the usual sense of doles-and it is only under the extreme pressure of misfortune that they will accept it. There is no fair reason why they should be dependent on it at any time. There should be a system corresponding to that of the Peasants' Banks, known in many Continental countries, by which they would be enabled to obtain loans at a low rate of interest on occasions of emergency. If they are disabled, and are not sufficiently provided for by the Employers' Liability Act, they should receive from the State a pension, independent of old age, which should carry no taint of pauperism with it. Their work is, after all, the chief asset of this country, and the means by which it is enabled to hold its place in the world, and such people ought to be treated as honored fighters in the industrial campaign, with a claim upon the nation. The best assistance which can be given to them in normal circumstances is by increase of opportunity. Good houseroom at moderate rents, fresh air, cheap transit, are among their chief requirements. Great municipalities are useful and beneficent in so far as they provide these. When they do so, they are frequently denounced by the Times and other papers because they engage

in "municipal trading"-as if that were a crime.

I pass, for convenience sake, to consideration of the third class. No man or woman ought to be included in this for whom there is a reasonable hope of social salvation. But it is undeniable that there is a great multitude whose self-respect and self-control are gone. I will not try to apportion the blame for this; but it does not all rest, as a rule, on the people themselves. There are cases of diseased character. They will not work, and those who take the modern view and associate mental deterioration with physical brain deterioration are probably right in saying that they cannot. Gifts are wasted upon these people, and are certain to be misused. It is a little short of criminal to give them sums of money, which will be spent in the public-house with the worst possible effect. They have lost the sense of responsibility and are unfit to regulate their own lives or control their families. The only thing to do for them is to apply a healthy compulsion to them. They ought to be weeded out of the community, where their example tempts and contaminates the weaker members of a better class. They are, as the Germans have discovered, the proper inhabitants of State Labor Colonies; and such colonies can easily be rendered self-supporting.

The second is incomparably the most difficult to deal with of the classes which have been mentioned, and here the eye of practice is needed no less than the eye of sympathy in discriminating between the permanently helpless and those who can be profitably helped. A man may be demoralized temporarily, and yet be capable of a fresh start to good purpose. But if the demoralization continues too long, the man's character decays beyond redemption. And what is the general, almost the universal, cause of demoralization

among working people? Want of employment-I say it unhesitatingly. There is nothing that experience establishes more plainly. Let me give an example of the worker in whom the process has begun, but in whom it can be arrested. A few days ago I met in a 'bus a man whose face was familiar to me. He was carrying a paper parcel in his hand, and he was not sober. Presently he revealed the contents of the parcel-a great lump of raw steak-and told me the story of its purchase. "I done nothin' yesterday. I done nothin' the day before" (and this implies that he had been penniless and practically foodless), "and to-day I earned four bob. I'm goin' to get two bags" (half-gallons) "o' beer, and I'm going to have a bust to-day, if it's the last."

"And what about to-morrow?" I asked.

"To-morrow's got to do the same as yesterday done."

Now, to the fastidious mind of the man always accustomed to refinement this fellow-being would probably appear a disgusting, besotted, hopeless savage. But he was not, in fact, a hopeless case, or anything approaching to it; he was in that condition of incipient despair, brought about by squelched hope and enforced idleness, which I can only describe by the phrase that sticks in my mind as "don't-care-a-damishness." I have experienced it; so would any man, given the conditions.

Let me give another example, of a different kind. Not many nights ago two people-a man and a womancame to my door to ask for help. The man had a plausible way with him and a plausible tale to tell. At the house of many a well-to-do-person he would have received a dole. But to one who knows the class he was plainly a humbug. I gave him nothing but the direction to the casual ward. He knew

he had been fairly recognized, and he went off without resentment. The woman was young and pretty, and had a child in her arms. She told a tale of a bare, foodless home; everything at the pawnbroker's that could go there. I am sure many a well-meaning person would have looked at that bonnie young woman with the gravest suspicion; she was not emaciated and did not seem ill. "The usual story, and the usual child," they would have said. "Often enough they hire the wretched children, and it shouldn't be allowed. An idle, good for nothing hussy." Well, I didn't think so. Somehow she seemed genuine. My wife went to her home, and it was clean as a place could be. Chapter and verse were given for her story, and it was true. Her husband had fought for bread, and so had she, and they had been defeated, for the time; that cruel defeat which is so common in "the annals of the poor." Is it marvellous that such people, worthy as they are by nature, become the prey of despair, suffer corruption by despair, drift downward, and at last become irredeemable? I repeat that the utmost care is needed in discriminating the fit in this class from the unfit, and only the eye of experience can do it.

And the remedy? Employment. I cannot repeat it too often or state it too emphatically. Regular work is the best safeguard of a man's character; it is the making of him. And I say that the State owes these men employment; it is the first duty of the nation to give them that chance of a decent life. The employment necessarily falls under two heads-that provided by private enterprise and that provided by public works.

In connection with employment to be derived from private enterprise, a great reform is necessary. Half the "out-ofworks" are simply men in the wrong place. If the great problem of unem