And yet it is in one of these lower rooms, occupying the ground floor of No. 10, that a good work is going on; for here, in an office almost representatively bare and dingy even in that place, the Society of Friends of Foreigners in Distress holds its weekly meetings of directors, and the secretary, Mr. William Charles Laurie, or his assistant, Mr. C. P. Smith, gives daily attendance (Saturdays excepted), between eleven and one o'clock. Assuredly, the funds of the charity are not expended in luxurious appointments for its headquarters. Even a German commission agent just commencing business could scarcely have a more simply-furnished apartment. The objects which first strike the visitor's attention are a row of japanned tin candlesticks, meant for the use of the board at any of their Wednesday meetings which may {39} be prolonged till after dusk. The furniture, if it was ever new, must have been purchased with a regard for economy in the very early history of the society. The work is evidently so organised as to require no long daily attendance. The place is furnished only according to the temporary necessities of business quickly dispatched. Neither in official salaries, nor in expensive official belongings, are the funds of the institution wasted. The system is, in fact, simple enough, and is conducted on the principles laid down by the first meetings of the committee above seventy years ago, with one important exception. Formerly, applicants for relief must have been for some time resident in England; but changes in transit, and the more rapid intercommunication of nations, have made it necessary that some ready aid should be granted to those who find themselves cast upon the terrible London wilderness without a friend to help them, ignorant to whom to apply for help, and little able even to make known their sufferings. Every Wednesday, then, the directors meet for receiving applications for relief, and reports of cases that have been investigated by the Visiting Committee. The plan adopted is to issue to the governors of the charity a number of small tickets, each of which, when signed and bearing the name of the applicant for relief, entitles the latter to apply to the weekly committee for an investigation of his case. Every subscriber of a guinea is regarded as a governor for a year, and there are, of course, life governors also. Both these are entitled to recommend cases either for what may be termed casual relief, or for election as pensioners to receive weekly assistance (of from 2s. to 5s., and in cases of {40} extreme old age or great infirmity, 7s. 6d. a week), sick allowances, or passage money to enable applicants to return to their own country.