bright, cheerful home (apart from the suffering and death which are inseparable from such a place) in that old sail-maker's warehouse, if brightness and cheerfulness are the accompaniments of good and loving work, as I thoroughly believe they are. It was during the terrible visitation of cholera, nearly twelve years ago, that this work of mercy was initiated, and the manner of its foundation has about it something so pathetic that it is fitting the story should be known, especially as the earnest, hopeful effort with which the enterprise began seems to have characterised it to the present day. Among the medical men who went about in the neighbourhood of Poplar and Ratcliff during the epidemic, was Mr. Heckford, a young surgeon, who, having recently come from India, was attached to the London Hospital, and who took a constant and active part in the professional duties he had undertaken. In that arduous work, he, as well as others, received valuable and indeed untiring aid from the ready skill and thoughtful care of a few ladies, who, having qualified themselves as nurses, devoted themselves to the labour of love amongst the poor. To one of this charitable sisterhood, who had been his frequent helper in the time of difficulty and danger, the young surgeon became attracted by the force of a sympathy that continued {103} after the plague was stayed in the district to which they had given so much care, and when they had time to think of themselves and of each other. They went away together a quietly married couple; both having one special aim and object in relation to the beneficent career upon which they had entered in company. Knowing from hardly-earned experience the dire need of the district, they at once began to consider what they could do to alleviate the sufferings of the women and children, so many of whom were sick and languishing, in hunger and pain, amidst conditions which forbade their recovery. If only they could make a beginning, and do something towards arresting the ravages of those diseases that wait on famine and lurk in foul and f tid alleys;—if they could establish a dispensary where women—mothers too poor to pay a doctor—could have medicine and careful encouragement; if they could find a place where, beginning with a small family of say half a dozen, they might take a tiny group of infants to their home, and so set up a centre of beneficent action, a protest against the neglect, the indifference, and the preventable misery for which that whole neighbourhood had so long had an evil distinction.