As for the children of the working classes, they, unless their parents are lazy or given to drink, really have, often, a far better time of it, so far as their own actual enjoyment is concerned, than the more repressed children of the rich. The pavement is their property, the streets are their world; the beautiful, dazzling, magical, ever-changing streets, with their myriad attractions, their boundless possibilities. Then, the children of the poor are not brought up as useless luxuries, but, from tender years, are required to contribute their share of help to the household; and what the average child loves above all things is to feel itself of use. Dirt and grime are of no account whatever to the child; and old clothes are always far more comfortable than new to play about in. The "shades of the prison house" may close in, later, about the children of the poor, when they must go to service, to the factory, to the shop; but, in their early years, their life has its attractions. Of course, however, with the families of the drunkard, the shiftless, the lazy, the case becomes altogether different. Drifting hopelessly from one slum to another, these soon help to swell the sad ranks of the "submerged tenth": poor creatures whose misery shivers in fireless garrets and damp cellars, whose empty stomachs call in vain for food; and whose only outlook is the workhouse, the "big villa" as they call it; an institution, however, that they will only enter from dire necessity, regarding it, as a rule, with wholesome dislike and disfavour. There are many churches and chapels all over London, yet the very poor rarely attend any of them. Indeed, very few London working men's wives attend any religious service, unless, that is, they happen to boast of a new hat or bonnet.... They will, however, receive the "visitor" or "tract-lady" with a sort of chilly grandeur; and, though their acquaintance with Holy Writ is generally slight, through all life's troubles their favourite text is ever this: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Thus, they are always, so to speak, comforting themselves for the enforced payment of the insurance of hard work and poor fare in this life by the assurance of paid-up capital with interest, in the next! Poor, hard-worked mothers of the slums! who would grudge you that harmless and unfailing consolation? [Illustration: _Bank Holiday._]