O! London's Heart! Laden with the sorrow of such lifeblood as this! What purifying influences can be brought to bear to lessen the pain that beats in every sob? In this great land, filled as it is with preachers social and political--in which every hour children are born to suffer, to grow up to shame and sorrow--can no medicine be found to cool your fevered blood, and no physicians, unselfish, wise, and merciful enough, and sufficiently regardless of the pomp of power, capable of administering it? Some few healers there are, who toil not in the light, and whose earnest lives are devoted to their work. Blessings on them, and on every heart that dictates benevolent remedy, even although it can only reach a few out of the many suffering! Blessings on the head that devises it, on the hand that administers it! You who walk through life wrapped in the cruel mantle of selfishness, heedless of the wails of your helpless brothers and sisters, stand aside; you who only heed your own comfort, your own ease, your own well-doing, who have no ointment for your neighbour's wounds, stand aside; let the gloom of night encompass you and hide your faces! But you whose hearts bleed at the sight of suffering, whose nerves quiver at the sound of it, whose hands are eager to relieve it, come into heaven's light, and let it shine upon you and the aureola which crowns you, in which every kind impulse that finds life in action gleams like a blessed star! It was past midnight when Felix made his way to his lodgings. The humble streets through which he walked as he neared his home were not quite deserted. Night-birds were there also, but of a low degree; night-birds with soiled plumage and ragged feathers; night-birds whose voices grated upon the ear, like the harsh cawing of crows. High up, from dingy garret windows, glimmered pale gleams of light. What mysteries were being wrought within those chambers? How beat the pulse of London's Heart? What links in the greatness of the mighty city were there being woven? Perchance within sat some poor seamstress stitching for bread sleepily through the night, wearing--O, dreadful paradox!--wearing her life away so that she might live. Not fables, not legends of the past, are such life struggles--they are of to-day. Perchance within was hatching some crime, the execution of which would quicken for a day the pulse of the great City's Heart. Who knew or who could tell? Crime and patient endurance, purity and vice, are but divided by a narrow strip of wall, and none can see the mysteries that lie beneath a single roof but the sleepless Eye which shines above them all! CHAPTER XIX. MR. SHELDRAKE SUGGESTS THAT IT IS TIME FOR MUZZY TO TURN OVER A NEW LEAF.