To those who know how the demand for certain kinds of labour varies, and frequently slackens towards the winter months, when need is sorest, this latter most merciful provision comes with a sense of truest charity. Tickets of admission are issued to friends and visitors of the Institution (and any one may be a visitor who chooses to ring at the bell of the old slaughter-house), entitling the holder to admission after the regular evening hour of half-past five to six, so that in bestowing one of these the judicious subscriber (not necessarily, but surely from sympathy a subscriber) can be a true benefactor. For these tickets will admit the really deserving nightly for a {197} week, with supper of bread and coffee or cocoa, or occasional savoury soup, and breakfast of bread and coffee. And even this time is occasionally extended, if there be a reasonable prospect of obtaining work. Not only ticket-holders, but every applicant, may have the same privilege, if it can be shown that he or she is really likely to obtain employment. But there is more than this. There are men here—truest of gentlemen, beyond that social stamp of rank which rightfully belongs to them—who, with a real, manly instinct, know how to take poverty by the hand without offensive patronage or untimely preaching. There are ladies who, in their true womanhood, can see the contrition in faces bowed down—the shame that is caused, not by evil doings, but by the feeling of dismay which comes of having to ask for charity—can sympathise with broken fortunes, with gentle nurture—cast upon a hard, relentless world, with that poverty which is "above the common." More still. Among the supporters and the constant visitors are those who can use special influence for cases that need it most, and obtain for them admission to hospitals and other asylums, or introduce to situations those who by sudden calamity have been deprived of the means of living. Yes, even in their deepest need, poor, wandering, homeless women may come here and find help, for in that large, lofty, yet warm and well-lighted room, the women's dormitory—one side of which is composed of a series of niches where the comfortable beds are placed—there are to be seen a row of doors, which seem to belong to a series of cabins, as, indeed, they do. Each door opens into a small bed-room—small, but with room for a chair, a tiny table, and the neat bed. They are the lodgings {198} set apart for women, who, in the midst of their poverty and destitution, are looking forward fearfully to the time when children will be born to them, and so to a period of weakness, and of the sad mingling of maternal pity and desponding sorrow. Let me say, in one line from the Report, that last year eight young women were received into the Refuge some time before their confinement, were passed on to Queen Charlotte's Hospital, and were helped until such time as they were able to help themselves.