But the hope for the future of this most admirable institution has grown to fill a larger space. It is indeed essential to any really permanent effort in such a district that it should be increased, and the founders looked forward with earnest anticipations of the time when, gathering help from without, they could enter upon a larger building, which will soon be completed, and will be more adequate to the needs of such a teeming population. The area embracing Poplar, Mile End, Whitechapel, St. George's, Limehouse, Ratcliff, Shadwell, and Wapping numbers some 400,000 inhabitants, and {107} strangely enough—as it will seem to those who have not yet learnt the true characteristics of the really deserving poor—many of the distressed people about that quarter will conceal their poverty, and strive as long as they are able—so that when at last they go to ask for aid the case may be almost hopeless, and the delay in obtaining admission may be fatal. There are already so many more applicants than can be received that it may be imagined what must be the vast amount of alleviable suffering awaiting the opportunity of wider means and a larger building. It would be easy to shock the reader by detailing many of the more distressing diseases from which the poor little patients suffer, but on visiting the wards you are less shocked than saddened, while the evident rest and care which are helping to restore and to sooth the sufferers ease you of the greater pain by the hope that they inspire. It is Sunday noon as we stand here in the dull street where, but for the sudden opening of a frowsy tavern and the appearance of two or three thirsty but civil customers, who are not only ready but eager to show you the way to the "Childun's 'orsepital," there would be little to distinguish it from a thoroughfare of tenantless houses. Ratcliff is at its dinner at present, but we shall as we go back see the male residents leaning against the doorposts smoking, and the women and children sitting at the doors as at a private box at the theatre, discussing the sordid events of the streets and the small chronicles of their poor daily lives.