by demanding that ragged schools such as this shall be closed if they do not show a certain technical standard of teaching, the means of partially feeding and clothing, which are in such cases inseparable from instructing, shall be destroyed. But here is a youthful guide—a shambling, shock-headed lad, with only three-quarters of a pair of shoes, and without a cap, who is to be our guide to another great work, on the Golden Lane side of this great zigzag, to the "Costermongers' Mission," in fact. You may follow him with confidence, for he is a Hope School-boy—and that means something, even in Chequer Alley. Still threading our way through those dim alleys, where each one looks like a cul-de-sac, but yet may be the devious entrance to another more foul and forbidding, we leave the "Hope-for-All" Mission Room resounding with {239} infant voices, all murmuring the simple lessons of the day. That room is seldom empty, because of the evening school where a large class of older pupils are taught, reading, writing, and arithmetic; the adult class, and the "mothers' meeting," to which poor women are invited that they may be assisted to make garments for themselves and their children from materials furnished for them at a cheap rate in such quantities as their poor savings can purchase. The visiting "Bible woman" is the chief agent in these works of mercy, since she brings parents and children to the school, and reports cases of severe distress to be relieved when there are funds for the purpose. Not only by teaching and sewing, however, are the hopeful influences of the place supported, for, as I have said already, in this big room the people of the district are invited to assemble to listen to lectures, readings, and music, to see dissolving views; and in the summer, when fields are in their beauty and the hedge-rows are full of glory, there is an excursion into the country for the poor, little, pallid children, while, strangest sight of all, a real "flower show" is, or was, held in Chequer Alley. One could almost pity the flowers, if we had any pity to spare from the stunted buds and blossoms of humanity who grow pale and sicken and so often die in this foul neighbourhood. But we have strange sights yet to see, so let us continue our excursion in and out, and round and round, not without some feeling of giddiness and sickness of heart, through the "Pigeons"—a tavern, the passage of which is itself a connecting link between two suspicious-looking courts—round by beershops all blank and beetling, and silent; past low-browed doorways and dim-curtained windows of tramps' kitchens, and the abodes of more {240} poverty, misery, and it may be crime, than you will find within a similar space in any neighbourhood in London, or out of it, except perhaps in about five streets "down East," or in certain dens of Liverpool and Manchester.