“Thank you a thousand times for _When it was Dark_. I am now looking forward to Friday, when your next book begins in the _Daily Mail_. I have been reading about you to-day and have taken courage to ask your help. You say ‘Let nothing disturb thee,’ etc. How can I help it in such trouble as mine. My husband has failed in health from years of hard work, and out of an income of _under_ £200 a year we are paying a curate £100. At this moment we are in _extremes_. My boy is reading for Holy Orders, and we are in need of funds for his expenses. He has been two years a licensed lay reader, and is a thorough Catholic and has the highest testimonials. Will you help me in my need to-day with a donation. I can give references, and for any help I shall be so thankful. Please forgive me for troubling you.” I have no doubt that this appeal is quite genuine, and a very poignant comment it is upon the way in which the priests of the Church of England are paid. This type of letter is not a pleasant one to receive when one is sitting down to work. The imagination with which one is endowed and by which one earns one’s bread, is not a faculty very easy to discipline or to control, and the power which should be devoted to the chapter one is engaged upon wanders away and constructs a picture of want and sorrow which one is quite powerless to alleviate. Nor is it once or twice that such letters as this arrive. Here is a far more piteous document still, if it is genuine. I think that when you have read it you will agree with me that it is genuine enough. There is nothing of the ordinary begging letter about it; and if the writer could invent such a story, he ought not to be so hopelessly unable to earn a single halfpenny by his pen. It is to be observed also that in this case the writer wants work, not money. “London, N. “DEAR SIR,