Give us reforms on these lines, and there will be no "complaining in our streets." The poorest of the poor, though lacking riches, will know something of the wealth of the mind, for chivalry and manhood, gentleness and true womanhood, will be their characteristics. The rounded limbs and happy hearts of "glorious childhood" will be no longer a dream or a fiction. No longer will the bitter cry be raised of "too old" when the fortieth birthday has passed, for men will be in their full manhood at sixty. Give us these reforms, and enable the poor to live in clean and sweet content, then their sons shall be strong in body and mind to fight our battles, to people our colonies, and to hand down to future ages a goodly heritage. But there is a content born of indifference, of apathy, of despair. There is the possibility that the wretched may become so perfect in their misery that a wish for better things and aspirations after a higher life may die a death from which there is no resurrection. From apathetic content may God deliver the poor! from such possibilities may wise laws protect them! "Righteousness"--right doing--"exalteth a nation;" and a nation whose poor are content because they can live in cleanliness, decency, and virtue, where brave boyhood and sweet girlhood can bud, blossom, and mature, is a nation that will dwell long in the land, and among whom the doings of the hooligans will be no longer remembered. CHAPTER X THE HEROISM OF THE SLUMS In our narrow streets, in our courts and alleys, where the air makes one sick and faint, where the houses are rotten and tottering, where humanity is crowded and congested, where the children graduate in the gutter--there the heights and depths of humanity can be sounded, for there the very extremes of human character stand in striking contrast. Could the odorous canals that intersect our narrow streets speak, they would tell of many a dark deed, but, thank God! of many a brave deed also. Numbers of "unfortunates," weary of life, in the darkness of night, and in the horror of a London fog, have sought oblivion in those thick and poisonous waters. Men, too, weary from the heart-breaking and ceaseless search after employment, and widows broken with hard work, endless toil, and semi-starvation, have sought their doom where the water lies still and deep. THE HERO WITH THE LAVENDER SUIT.