These are only three of the first cases in the official report of pensioners, and they are not selected because of their peculiarly distressing character. When it is remembered that this society has not, in a general way, sufficient means to grant more than two shillings a week in the way of relief, and when we take the trouble to observe that in the majority of cases where a pension is granted the recipients have been so long resident here that they may be said to have lost their nationality in ours, will it be too much to ask of England—alike the asylum for the persecuted and the teacher of liberty and of charity—that the "Friends of Foreigners in Distress" shall be regarded as the friends of all of us alike in the name of Him of whom it was said, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" But I have not quite done with the pensioners. I must ask the reader to go with me to Lower Norwood, where amidst a strange solitude, that is almost desolation, we will visit three ladies of the ancien régime, one of whom, at least, began life nearly ninety years ago as a fitting playmate for the daughter of a king. {44} WITH THOSE WHO ARE LEFT DESOLATE. There is something about the aspect of Nature as seen from the railway station at Lower Norwood on a damp and misty day which, if not depressing, can scarcely be regarded as conducive to unusual hilarity. I speak guardedly because of my respect for the district, and lest I should in any way be suspected of depreciating any particular locality as an eligible place of residence. In the latter regard I may mention that the immediate neighbourhood of Lower Norwood Station is not at present converted into a small township by the erection of long rows of tenements on freehold or long leasehold plots. My remarks apply only to the general outlook from the road, amidst an atmosphere threatening drizzle, and beneath a sky betokening rain. As far as houses are concerned, there seemed to me, on the occasion of my last visit, far more probability of pulling down than of building. In fact, I went for the purpose of inspecting a whole series of very remarkable tenements which I had heard were soon either to disappear from the oozy-looking green quadrangle of which they formed three sides, or were to be converted to another purpose than that of the dwelling-places of a few elderly ladies who occupied one dreary side, whence they could look at the desolation of the closed houses on the other.[1] {45} It will not be without regret that I shall hear of this intention being carried out, for the houses are devoted to the sheltering of alms-folk; and the alms-folk are the elder pensioners of that admirable association, the Society of the Friends of Foreigners in Distress, which, for above ninety years, has been doing its useful work among those who, but for its prompt and judicious aid, would feel that they were "alone in a strange land."