system among the poor are founded on exactly the same principles. How much property has been lost, how many policies have been forfeited, because poor people have been unable to keep up their payments, we do not know; if we did, I am quite sure that it would prove a revelation. In this respect the thriftiness of the poor is other people's gain. It was a triumph of pluck and grit, for at the end of four long months the widow received her cobbled boots. Her half-crown had been completed. "I had them two years; they lasted me well--ever so much better than a cheap new pair," the widow told me; nevertheless, she was glad to leave them behind and go home with her feet shod resplendently in a new pair of seven-and-elevenpenny. She might venture to lift the front of her old dress now as she crossed the street, and I am sure that she did not forget to do it, for she was still a woman, in spite of all, and had some of that quality left severe people call vanity, but which I like to think of as self-respect. "How is it," I was asked by a critical lady, "that your poor women let their dresses drag on the pavement and crossings? I never see any of them lift their dresses behind or in front. They must get very dirty and insanitary." "My dear madam," I replied, "they dare not, for neither their insteps nor their heels are presentable; but give them some new boots, and they will lift their dresses often enough and high enough." There was another pair, too, that had come down, and they invited speculative thought. They were not born in the slums or fitted for the slums, but they came into a poor widow's possession nevertheless. They had not been patched or cobbled, and just enough of their former glory remained to allow of judgment being passed upon them. They had been purchased at a "jumble sale" for threepence, and were dear at the price. The feet that had originally worn them had doubtless trodden upon carpet, and rested luxuriantly upon expensive hearthrugs. They were shoes, if you please, with three straps across the insteps, high, fashionable heels, buckles and bows in front. But their high heels had disappeared, the buckles had long since departed, the instep straps were broken and dilapidated, the pointed toes were open, and the heels were worn down. When completely worn out and unmendable, some lady had sent them to a local clergyman for the benefit of the poor. I gazed on them, and then quite understood, not for the first time, that there is a kind of charity that demoralizes the poor, but it is a charity that is not once blessed. Here was an old pair of "Plimsolls," whose rubber soles had long ago departed; there a pair of shoes that had done duty at the seaside, whose tops had originally been brown canvas, and whose soles had been presumably leather; here a pair of "lace-ups"; there a pair of "buttons"--but the lace-holes were all broken, and buttons were not to be seen.