"What does he work at?" "Boots." "Does he go to a school of art?" "Every night it is open." I bade the worthy woman good-day, telling her how I admired the pluck, perseverance, and talent of her boys, also adding that I felt sure that she had a great deal to do with it and their success. "Well," she said, "I have done my best for them, but they have been good lads." Done her best for them, and a splendid best it was! Who else could have done so much for them? Not all the rich patrons the world could furnish combined could have done one-half for them that the brave, kindly, simple boot-machining mother had done for them. She was better than a hero; she was a true mother. She did her best! But her sons were heroes indeed; they were made of the right material. Birth had done something for them, although their parents were poor, and one departed early, leaving them to the mother, themselves, the slums, and the world. When I can see growing youths, surrounded by sordid misery and rampant vice, working on in poverty, withstanding every temptation to self-indulgence, framing no pictures till they can pay for them, whose artistic souls do not lead them to despise honest labour, whose poetic temperaments do not lead them to idleness and debt, when they are not ashamed of their boot-machining mother, I recognize them as heroes, and I don't care a rap whether they become great artists or not. They are men, and brave men, too. I can imagine someone saying: "He ought not to have married; he should have studied in Paris. Probably the world has lost a great artist." Perhaps it has, but it kept the man, and we have not too many of that stamp. Perhaps, after all, he did the right thing, for he got a good helpmate, and one who helped him to paint. Genius is not so rare in the slums as superior people suppose, for one of our great artists, but lately dead, whose work all civilized countries delight to honour, played in a gutter of the near neighbourhood where the widow machinist lived, and climbed a lamp-post that he might get a furtive look into a school of art; and he, too, married a poor woman. A "FOSTER-MOTHER." And what wonderful women many of our London girls are! I often think of them as I have seen them in our slums, sometimes a little bit untidy and not over-clean; but what splendid qualities they have! They know their way about, nor are they afraid of work. Time and again I have seen them struggling under the weight of babies almost as big as themselves. I have watched them hand those babies to other girls whilst they had their game of hop-scotch; and when those babies have showed any sign of discontent, I have seen the deputy-mother take the child again into her arms, and press it to her breast, and soothe it with all the naturalness of a real mother. And when the mothers of those girls die, and a family of young children is left behind, what then? Why, then they become real deputy-mothers, and splendidly rise to their position.