relief tickets any longer. It was here that I heard so much about anonymous letters, of which I have given you three samples. Having said that I should like to see the soup kitchen, one of the committee offered to go with me thither at six o'clock the next morning; and so I came away from the meeting in the cool twilight. Old Preston looked fine to me in the clear air of that declining day. I stood a while at the end of the "Bull" gateway. There was a comical-looking little knock-kneed fellow in the middle of the street --a wandering minstrel, well known in Preston by the name of "Whistling Jack." There he stood, warbling and waving his band, and looking from side to side,--in vain. At last I got him to whistle the "Flowers of Edinburgh." He did it, vigorously; and earned his penny well. But even "Whistling Jack" complained of the times. He said Preston folk had "no taste for music." But he assured me the time would come when there would be a monument to him in that town. CHAPTER VII. About half-past six I found my friend waiting at the end of the "Bull" gateway. It was a lovely morning. The air was cool and clear, and the sky was bright. It was easy to see which was the way to the soup kitchen, by the stragglers going and coming. We passed the famous "Orchard," now a kind of fairground, which has been the scene of so many popular excitements in troubled times. All was quiet in the "Orchard" that morning, except that, here, a starved-looking woman, with a bit of old shawl tucked round her head, and a pitcher in her hand, and there, a bare-footed lass, carrying a tin can, hurried across the sunny space towards the soup kitchen. We passed a new inn, called "The Port Admiral." On the top of the building there were three life-sized statues--Wellington and Nelson, with the Greek slave between them--a curious companionship. These statues reminded me of a certain Englishman riding through Dublin, for the first time, upon an Irish car. "What are the three figures yonder?" said he to the car-boy, pointing to the top of some public building. "Thim three is the twelve apostles, your honour," answered the driver. "Nay, nay," said the traveller,"that'll not do. How do you make twelve out of three?" "Bedad," replied the driver, "your honour couldn't expect the whole twelve to be out at once such a murtherin' wet day as this." But we had other things than these to think of that day. As we drew near the baths and washhouses, where the soup kitchen is, the stream of people increased. About the gate there was a cluster of melancholy loungers, looking cold and hungry. They were neither going in nor going away. I was told afterwards that many of these were people who had neither money nor tickets for food--some of them wanderers from town to town; anybody may meet them limping, footsore and forlorn, upon the roads in Lancashire, just now-- houseless wanderers, who had made their way to the soup kitchen to