As one realized the full meaning of this little domestic tragedy, and knew that it was only one of many daily enacted in the richest city in the world--the scene of it laid not a mile from the full tide of all the pomps and vanities of fashion, of all the notorious luxury and extravagances which is the outward show of our magnificence and wealth, it was hard to repress a feeling of something akin to shame and anger--shame for the callous indifference which bids one half the world ignore the sufferings of the other--anger that, with all the gold annually borne along on the broad stream of charity, so little of it ever reaches the really deserving and necessitous poor. The house this poor woman lay dying in was one of a block which would have been a prize to a sanitary inspector anxious to make a sensational report. For the room in question the plumber out of work had to pay four and sixpence, and the broken pane of glass the landlord had refused to replace. The man was told 'he must do it himself, or if he didn't like it as it was he could go.' Such stories as this are painful, but they should be told. It is good for the rich that now and again they should be brought face to face with misery, or they might doubt its existence. These people--our fellow-citizens--cannot be neglected with impunity. These fever and pestilence-breeding dens that are still allowed to exist, these deathtraps out of which vestrymen and capitalists make large annual incomes, are a danger to the whole community. While I am on this subject, I may as well quote an instance which bears directly upon the interest--the selfish interest--which the better classes have in lending their voices to swell the chorus of complaints which is going up about the present state of things. Here is an 'interior' to which I would call the special attention of ladies who employ nurse-girls for their children. This room when we entered it was in a condition beyond description. The lady was washing the baby, and she made that an excuse for the dirt of everything else. Two ragged boys were sitting on the filthy floor, a dirty little girl was in a corner pulling a dirty kitten's tail, and the smoke from the untidiest grate I ever saw in my life was making the half-washed baby sneeze its little head nearly off. The family, all told, that slept in this room was seven. There was a bed and there was a sofa--so I concluded the floor must have been the resting-place of some of them. 'The eldest girl'--materfamilias informed us in answer to our questions--'was gone out. She slept on the sofa.' We knew somebody had slept there, because some rags were on it, which had evidently done duty as bed-clothes. Outside this room, which opened on to a back-yard, was a dust-bin. We didn't want eyesight to know that--it appealed with sufficient power to another sense. Inside was an odour which made the dust-bin rather a relief.