No. 11. Youth, aged 16. Sad case; Londoner. Works at odd jobs and matches selling. Has taken 3d. to-day, i.e., net profit 1 1/2d. Has five boxes still. Has slept here every night for a month. Before that slept in Covent Garden Market or on doorsteps. Been sleeping out six months, since he left Feltham Industrial School. Was sent there for playing truant. Has had one bit of bread to-day; yesterday had only some gooseberries and cherries, i.e., bad ones that had been thrown away. Mother is alive. She "chucked him out" when he returned home on leaving Feltham because he could'nt find her money for drink. No. 12. Old man, age 67. Seems to take rather a humorous view of the position. Kind of Mark Tapley. Says he can't say he does like it, but then he must like it! Ha, ha! Is a slater by trade. Been out of work some time; younger men naturally get the work. Gets a bit of bricklaying sometimes; can turn his hand to anything. Goes miles and gets nothing. Earned one and twopence this week at holding horses. Finds it hard, certainly. Used to care once, and get down-hearted, but that's no good; don't trouble now. Had a bit of bread and butter and cup of coffee to-day. Health is awful bad, not half the size he was; exposure and want of food is the cause; got wet last night, and is very stiff in consequence. Has been walking about since it was light, that is 3 a.m. Was so cold and wet and weak, scarcely knew what to do. Walked to Hyde Park, and got a little sleep there on a dry seat as soon as the park opened. These are fairly typical cases of the men who are now wandering homeless through the streets. That is the way in which the nomads of civilization are constantly being recruited from above. Such are the stories gathered at random one Midsummer night this year under the shade of the plane trees of the Embankment. A month later, when one of my staff took the census of the sleepers out of doors along the line of the Thames from Blackfriars to Westminster, he found three hundred and sixty-eight persons sleeping in the open air. Of these, two hundred and seventy were on the Embankment proper, and ninety-eight in and about Covent Garden Market, while the recesses of Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges were full of human misery. This, be it remembered, was not during a season of bad trade. The revival of business has been attested on all hands, notably by the barometer of strong drink. England is prosperous enough to drink rum in quantities which appall the Chancellor of the Exchequer but she is not prosperous enough to provide other shelter than the midnight sky for these poor outcasts on the Embankment.