All this is extinct now, but the beggar is not extinct, and never will be, as we are told. What then is to be done? for we are all more or less responsible for their existence. It seems to me that there is only one thing to be done, namely, to give up, every one of us, whatever quotum of our income we think right, and to hand it over to such societies as take the trouble to find out for us some not quite undeserving poor. Our Charity Organisation Society does no doubt much good, but it should have another branch, the members of which should be understood to give, say, a tenth part, or any other quotum of their annual income for charitable purposes. Such a society existed formerly. The members of it were not subjected to any inquisitorial questions. They simply declared that they would regularly devote a tenth of their income to the alleviation of poverty, and they were left perfectly free to do it each in his own way. What has become of that society? The organiser and leading spirit of it died, and no one seems to have taken it up again. There is, however, one class of beggars and impostors more objectionable than any—people who do not beg for money, but borrow, and never mean to return either the money or any thanks. I have known of a good many cases where young men visiting Oxford and having made a few acquaintances among the undergraduates, were invited to dinner in college, and not only borrowed from their young companions, but, introduced by their young friends, ran up bills among the tradesmen of the town, and then quietly slipped away, leaving their friends to satisfy their creditors as best they could. All this goes on, and it seems impossible to stop it. Even if now and then these swindlers make a mistake, and place themselves within the clutches of the law, what satisfaction is it to keep them in prison for a month or two? No one knows their real names. They are boarded and fed at the expense of the country, and enjoy a little rest from their labours. That is all. They go in and come out of prison as if nothing had happened, and all they have learnt in prison is how to be more careful in future. Who can doubt that there is much poverty and suffering, even undeserved suffering, among the poor, more particularly among poor foreigners in London? The Society for the Relief of Foreigners in Distress does much, but that much is but like a drop of milk in an ocean of salt water. The stories of the applicants printed each year, and carefully sifted by the committee, are simply heart-rending. And those who go to see for themselves often wish they had never crossed the thresholds of these hovels in which whole families live huddled up together, hungry, sick, dying, dead. One feels utterly hopeless and helpless at the sights one sees. One might as well jump into the Atlantic to save a sinking vessel and a drowning crew as attempt to rescue this drowning humanity.