Gordon was, indeed, generous to a fault, and sometimes he was taken in by impostors; but as he had a good knowledge of human nature, he was not deceived so often as many with his generous heart would be. His generosity was only limited by his purse, and there were times in his life when he drew the line too fine, for, as he himself once said, "I assure you that many a time I have not known where my food was to come from, nor if I should find a place in which to lie down at night." So long as there was money in his pocket, so long had he money to give away; but on many occasions he forgot that he had a long railway journey before him, and that the generosity he displayed to the needy would not be extended to him at the railway ticket office. But on the whole, his money was well laid out; many is the lad he started in life, many the waif he picked up from the gutter, who, now a well-to-do respectable member of society, might, but for him, have been a criminal, getting into trouble himself, and leading others astray. * * * It would be interesting to follow more in detail the career of this remarkable man at Gravesend, but space forbids. Gordon only spent six years at this kind of work, and much of the time was engaged in his official duties, yet the results were so good, that one cannot but regret that a longer part of his career was not passed in the same way. From his letters written in the Soudan, it is evident that he often thought of devoting his old age to work among the poor, had he been spared. It was, however, willed otherwise, and we are only permitted to see how much can be done by a man in six years, when his heart is thoroughly in the work. It has been remarked more than once, that Gordon's military career reminds one of the great soldier Cromwell, who did so much to rescue England from the degenerate condition into which it had fallen under the miserable rule of the Stuarts. In the same way the six years spent by Gordon at Gravesend, very forcibly remind us of the great religious philanthropist, Lord Shaftesbury, who did perhaps more than any other man of this nineteenth century, or any other century, to relieve human suffering, and to solve some of those difficult problems that are associated with the condition of the poor. Lord Shaftesbury had little in common with Cromwell, except that both loved God and hated tyranny and injustice. Their ways of going to work were very different, but one cannot help seeing that Gordon combined much of both characters; and had his lot fallen in different times or different circumstances, he might have undertaken the work of either. He had all the martial instinct of a Cromwell, and, with it, the love of relieving suffering which so characterised Lord Shaftesbury. His one object seems to have been to--