See him now, in his honoured old age, hated of his workpeople, envied by Respectables, despised by the county gentry and feared by almost everyone, a millionaire to-day, with a seat in Clodshire, a house in Portland Terrace, a yacht at Brighton, and a deer forest in Inverness-shire. I have met his son, the Master of the Slowcomb Hounds, a good sort of Philistine, who would rather do his fellow-men a good turn than an ill one, but a terrible ignoramus and deadweight for all that; with far less real knowledge of men and books than my cobbler round the corner. There are three daughters. One of them, Miss Evelyn, is betrothed to Lord Durt, the young impoverished peer, who was lately earning thirty shillings a week as society reporter to the "Gadabout." I am glad for Durt. He has had a rough time, and Evelyn is an amiable, even hopeful specimen of the Respectable girl. She has lately talked about industrial questions, and I believe she is half ashamed already that papa has women in his employment earning nine shillings a week upon which to keep body and soul together. Yes, it is with the sweat of women and children that Pugsley has become a plutocrat. His wife is the Patroness of the Refuge for the Fallen. How many of Pugsley's women have been forced to supplement their wretched earnings by prostitution? Someone once put this question to the pickleman. "Really, Mrs. ----," he said, "I am not responsible for the morals of my working people." But I say that it is such fellows as Pugsley who force girls to sell themselves in the street. I ask you, my Respectable sister, could you live yourself and help to support your widowed mother and two young children on a wage of seven shillings a week? I have known one of Pugsley's women workers try to do this till death came with its eternity of rest for that poor, semi-starved, aching body. To me it is a constant source of wonder, and a matter of profound respect for woman's moral courage that more of Pugsley's ill-paid women helpers do not walk the streets for hire. O! Great Pugsley, I would that I could be certain of a day of reckoning betwixt you and an Almighty Judge! Sometimes, in dreams, I hear the tramp, tramp, of thousands of feet, and see the white faces of toilers gleam in the murk of a London night, a night of violent retribution. Must we wait for this? Must hands be stained with men's blood ere the rich will bestir themselves to render justice to the poor? I pray the fates that it may not be so! But everywhere, in the great cities, and out in the fields, I hear the murmur of deep, sullen discontent.