"We then entered a licensed lodging-house accommodating 350. This was a sad sight, because three-fourths of the men were unemployed poor, chiefly dock-labourers, willing and glad to work, if work could be got. On many a face there were stamped hopelessness and apathy. Two poor fellows were sipping a cup of tea, without milk or sugar, given to them by a poor man, but they had not a morsel of bread; and this was their breakfast,--a late one truly, for it was ten at night. Out all day in search of work, their last coppers were paid for the night's lodging, and a cup of poor tea was their only meal. It made one's spirit groan to think of the misery that sin and selfishness had wrought for these poor fellows. "In the next house the inmates were mostly thieves. But here is one poor fellow, a workman, but with no work; he has been out in the streets three nights, and now one of his companions pleads with us for three-pence to procure him a night's rest. We peeped into several other such dwellings, but the same story was repeated in each. In all we were struck with the kind reception we met with, evidently due in part to the presence of our companion, who, although a lady, feels called of God to labour among these dens of misery, where there is so much to do and _so few to do it_, and to the fact that we lent a kindly ear to their tale of distress, and did what lay in our power to relieve the immediate pressure of the very destitute. But, above all, we were thankful to meet with such a spirit of hearing, and a ready attention when Jesus was lifted up as the Saviour of sinners. "We now entered a court to visit a poor woman whose husband had died suddenly the week before. It was between nine and ten, and we found the widow had been washing, the clothes hanging from lines in the room. Her two children, aged nine and eleven, were busily employed in matchbox-making. "The rapidity and neatness of these little human machines were truly most remarkable; the number of boxes made in a day, from half-past six in the morning to ten at night, was something fabulous. The floor of the room was covered with boxes; they earned a shilling each a day; often days passed when they were unable to get work to do. Poor children! thin and wan-looking, life seemed a terribly serious thing to them, their days spent in incessant toil when work was plentiful, their nights--well, they had a bedstead with a bundle of dirty rags for a bed, but not a stitch of bedclothes; the clothes the children wore were their only covering at night.