The worst duty of the official who presides is to authorize the summoning before a magistrate of the parents who cannot or will not send their children regularly. The law leaves him no option. All children must come unless illness or some equally potent excuse can be urged, and if they don't the parent must appear before a magistrate, who, if the case is made out, is bound by the law to impose a fine. I will endeavour to show you, as the meeting progresses, a few of the parents who thoroughly deserve the penalty. A 'B' meeting is held in the upstairs room of one of the Board Schools. The summoned parents wait in a huge crowd outside. They come in one by one to be disposed of. The president of the meeting sits with the book before him, in which the cases to be heard are fully entered up. Beside him sits the Board official, the inspector of officers, who advises him on little points of School Board law, and who marks the papers which are to be returned to the School Board officer 'in charge of the case' to be acted upon. Standing round the room are the School Board officers of the different divisions in the district. They are familiar with the history and circumstances of every one who comes into the little room, and they supply confirmation or contradiction as the necessity arises. Somewhere or other in the scene my friend and I stand. We are accepted by the parents who come and go as part and parcel of the 'Inquisition,' and some care is necessary in executing our descriptive task, for this class is very great on the rights of property; and more than one energetic dame, if she knew she was being 'noted' by an unauthorized interloper, would return the compliment with interest. 'The short and simple annals of the poor, here related in their own words, will induct the reader into the mysteries of 'How they live' far more thoroughly than I could do did I fill pages with my own composition; so, silence, pray, and let the 'B' meeting commence. Here is a lady who very much objects to being summoned. 'What bizerness 'as he to summings me,' she says, pointing to the officer, 'just cus my boy ain't bin fur a week? He's 'arsh and harbitury, that's what he is.'Arsh and harbitury! D'ye think I ain't got anything to do without a-trapesin' down here a-losin' my work? I tell ye what it is----' The chairman mildly interposes: 'My good lady----' 'Don't good lady me. I ain't a lady. If I was you daren't treat me like it, you daren't; it's only because I'm----' 'My good woman, will you allow me to say one word?' 'Oh--yes--certainly--if you've got anything to say--go on.' Thus encouraged, the chairman points out to the voluble lady that her son has not been to school for a fortnight. 'Well, it's all through the boots.' 'Boots!' says the chairman; 'why, that was what you said last time, and we gave you an order on a shoemaker for a pair.'