Heaven help that mother in her forlorn hope and desperate search! I can imagine her clutching the babe tightly to her, holding in her closed hand the shilling that is to act as a deposit for binding a tenancy, her last rent-book in her bosom to show her _bona fides_, going from street to street, from house to house, climbing staircase after staircase, exploring and appealing time after time. She will stoutly declare that she has but two children, when she has six; she will declare that her husband is a good, sober man, and in regular work, neither of which will be true. Ultimately, she will promise to pay an impossible rent, and tremulously hand over the shilling to bind the contract; then she will return to the "things," and tell the children of their new home. This is no imaginary picture. It is so very true, so very common, that it does not strike our imagination. The cry of the very poor is ever sounding in our ears: "We have nowhere to live! We don't know where to go!" This fear of being homeless, of not being allowed to live in such wretched places as they now inhabit, haunts the very poor through life, and pursues them to the grave. And this worry, anxiety, and trouble falls upon the woman, adding untold suffering to her onerous life; for it is the woman that has to meet the rent-collector, whose visits come round all too quickly; she has to mollify him when a few shillings remain unpaid. The wife has to procure other rooms when her husband has fallen out of work, and she receives the inevitable notice to quit when there appears to be a possibility of the family becoming still more numerous. If sickness, contagious or otherwise, comes upon any of the children, and the shadow of death enters the home, upon the wife comes the heart-breaking task of seeking a new home and conveying her children and "things" to another place. This is no light task. The expense is a consideration, and the old home, bad as it was, had become in many ways dear to her. What more pitiful sight can be imagined than the removal? No pantechnicon is required--a hired barrow is sufficient; and when night has well advanced the goods are conveyed in semi-darkness from the old home to the new. Think for a moment what a life she lives, to what shifts she is reduced, what privations she endures! Is it any wonder that the children born of her have poor bodies and strange minds? "The children born of thee are fire and sword, Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws," Tennyson makes King Arthur to say. In many respects these words are true of poor mothers in London. The houses in which they live, the conditions under which they exist, the ceaseless worries and nameless fears they endure, make it absolutely certain that many of the children born will be strange creatures.