1. Mrs. Walker. 7 children of school age; fee 2d. a week each. Total earnings of entire family, 10s. Rent, 5s. 6d. Husband once good mechanic, lost employment through illness and deafness. Parish relief none. Character good. Is now a hawker--sells oranges and fish. Children half-starved. When an orange is too bad to sell they have it for breakfast, with a piece of bread. 2. Mr. Thompson. 5 children of school age. Out of work. No income but pawning clothes and goods. Rent, 4s. Wife drinks surreptitiously. Husband, good character. 3. Mrs.-----. 5 children of school age; widow. Earnings, 6s. Rent, 3s. Her husband when alive was a Drury Lane clown. Respectable woman; feels her poverty very keenly. 4. Mr. Garrard. 8 children of school age; two always under doctor. No income. Pawning last rags. Rent, 5s. 6d. No parish relief. Starving. Declines to go into workhouse. I could multiply such instances by hundreds. These, however, will suffice to show how serious a burden is added to the lives of the very poor by the enforced payment of school fees. As a rule they are remitted for very good and sufficient reasons. How these people live is a mystery. It is a wonder that they are not found dead in their wretched dens, for which they pay a rent out of all proportion to their value, by dozens daily. But they live on, and the starving children come day after day to school with feeble frames and bloodless bodies, and the law expects them to learn as readily as well-fed, healthy children, and to attain the same standard of proficiency in a given time. It is these starving children who are not allowed to earn money towards their support until they are thirteen, and in many cases fourteen. Less necessitous children, as a rule, pass out of school earlier, for reasons which will be obvious to anyone who reflects for a moment upon the relationship of a healthy brain to a healthy body. In another chapter we shall hear a few more personal narrations at a 'B' meeting. I will conclude this one with a story of a young gentleman whose excuse for non-attendance is at least dramatic. He has been absent for six weeks, and his mother explains, 'It's all along of 'is aven a reg'lar engagement at the Surrey Pantermine, and there hev been so many matynees.' 'He's on the Surrey, is he?' says the chairman. 'Perhaps that's the reason he can't pass the Standard!' We see the joke and chuckle, but the boy doesn't. Evidently his pantomime training has been thrown away upon him. CHAPTER V.