Up Gower Street there's a crowd, which in London is but another word for a magnet which draws to itself the sharp needles of the streets; ay, the blunt and broken ones, too--everything steely clings to it, while the softer material falls away. Only a woman crying! Not much that. We may see that every day in our streets, and in most cases turn shuddering away, thinking of the dear ones at home--wife and daughters--sisters or betrothed, and saying to ourselves, "Can this be a woman!" But here we can stand with pitying feelings welling up from our hearts. Only a woman crying! but with such tears gushing from her eyes as Rachel shed when mourning for her children, and refusing to be comforted because they were not. A poor, untutored, unlettered woman, who has not learned the art of controlling her feelings. She has just come out of the great, gaunt, cheerless building; staggered along for some distance, blinded with tears; and at last, oblivious of all but her own bitterness, sunk down upon a doorstep sobbing wildly, for she has been to see the stalwart son who was to have been the prop and stay of her old age, and they have shown her a gaunt, pale, wild-eyed figure that knew her not; and she has come away brokenhearted, and, unlike Joseph of old, too forgetful of self to seek a place where she might weep. Rocking herself to and fro, and moaning bitterly, till a friendly arm is offered, and she is led away, the crowd parting to let her pass, with many a rough, sympathising word uttered; and then with her burden of sorrow she slowly totters along the gloomy street, followed by a straggling crew of children, ragged boys, girls top-heavy with babies tied up in shawls, and wonderful above all other things for their vitality. To see them day by day, and the risks they run, the only wonder is that their babyhood does not form their shroud, and cover them effectually from further advance towards adolescence. And now a cab drawn at a foot's pace towards the great door of the hospital--to so many the jaws of death. A little crowd here even, to see the patient carried in by the two stout porters. A little crowd here, when it might be a case of fever or something else--infectious, contagious. But no; this is no fever case, but one for our skilled surgeons; for the poor lad is bleeding, bound up, and fainting. Injured by machinery. His finger was caught by the cogs of a machine--the hand, the arm drawn in, and crushed right up to above the elbow, so that, what with loss of blood and the shock to the system, it will be a clever surgeon that can save his life.