But even in the front of their houses in a London court, are the poor much better off? I go sometimes on a hot summer evening into a narrow court, with houses on each side. The sun has heated them all day, until it has driven nearly every inmate out of doors. Those who are not at the public-house are standing or sitting on their doorsteps, quarrelsome, hot, dirty; the children are crawling or sitting on the hard, hot stones, till every corner of the place looks alive. Everyone looks in everyone else’s way; the place echoes with words not of the gentlest. Sometimes on such a hot summer’s evening, in such a court, when I am trying to calm excited women shouting their execrable language at one another, I have looked up suddenly and seen one of those bright gleams of light the summer sun sends out just before he sets, catching the top of a red chimney-pot, and beautiful there, though too directly above their heads for the crowd below to notice it much. But to me it brings sad thought of the fair and quiet places far away, where it is falling softly on tree and hill and cloud, and I feel that that quiet, that beauty, that space would be more powerful to calm the wild excess about me than all my frantic striving with it. Leicester Square shows us another thing: such places must be made bright, pretty and neat—a small place which is not so becomes painfully dreary; it is quite curious to notice how little one feels shut in when the barriers are lovely, or contain beautiful things which the eye can rest on. The small enclosed leads which too often bound the view of a back dining-room in London oppress one like the walls of a prison; but a tiny cloistered court of the same size will give a sense of repose; and colour introduced into such spaces will give them such beauty as will prevent one from fretting against the boundaries. Strange and beautiful instance this of how—if we recognize the limitations appointed for us, accept them, and deal well with what is given—the passionate longing for more is taken away and a great peace hallows all. THE WORKERS. LETTER OF 1900.—I have been thinking a great deal about how responsible bodies can, in the future, secure such management by trained ladies as has been found helpful in the past. This has turned my attention much more than heretofore to the thought of how to provide more responsible professional workers, for I feel that, however much volunteers may help, it is only to professional workers that responsible and continuous duties can, as a rule, be entrusted, especially by large owners or corporations.