weaknesses, yields but once to a similar sin, all claim to support is forfeited, and she goes down with dreadful celerity to the lowest depths. Plenty of good husbands, and brave men they are, refuse to take advantage of this Act, and bear all the unspeakable ills and sorrows connected with a drunken wife, bearing all things, enduring all things, and hoping all things, rather than turn the mothers of their children into the streets. But it is far different with some husbands, whose lives and habits have conduced to, if they have not actually caused, their wives' inebriety; to them the Act is a boon, and they are not backward in applying for relief. I have elsewhere given my views as to the working of these special clauses, but I again take an opportunity of saying that the whole proceedings are founded in stupidity. In action they are cruel, and in results they are demoralizing to the individuals concerned, and to the State generally. All this is the more astounding when one realizes that the Act might easily have been made a real blessing; and it is more astounding still when the temper and tone of society is considered. We demand, and rightfully demand, that first offenders shall have another chance. Has it come to this--that a wretched wife, who, through suffering, worry, neglect, or ill-health or mental disturbance, has given way to drink, shall have less consideration than the young thief? So it appears. We scour London's streets, we seek out the grossest women even civilization can furnish--women whose only hope lies with the Eternal Father--and we put them in inebriates' reformatories, and keep them there, at a great expense, for two or three years. Money without stint is spent that they may have the shadow of a chance for reclamation. Organized societies are formed for their after-care when released from the reformatories. And yet we calmly contemplate married women, otherwise decent but for drink, real victims of inebriety, being thrust homeless into the streets, with the dead certainty that they will descend to the Inferno out of which we are seeking to deliver the unfortunates. CHAPTER II SOME BURGLARS I HAVE MET The common London burglar is by no means a formidable fellow. Speaking generally, there is nothing of Bill Sikes about him, for he has not much stature, strength, courage, or brains. Most of those that I have met have been poor specimens of manhood, ready alike to surrender to a self-possessed woman or to a young policeman. Idle, worthless fellows, who, having no regular work to do, and being quite indifferent as to what happens to them, often attempt burglary, but of the crudest description.