It is the normal world, in England and America, turned inside out, seen from the other side of Looking Glass country. From this side are examined the benevolence of the rich and the benevolence of the poor, the Salvation Army shelter, the common gaol, the Charity Organisation Society, the various efforts of Society to protect itself against the locust and the caterpillar. The locust, it must be confessed, especially in new countries, generally has the best of it. The artless and somewhat clumsy organisations of State and city and private persons spread their simple traps of cheese or delicacies for the mouse. The mouse annexes the cheese and leaves the trap scatheless. Especially is this true in America, where wealth, easily and carelessly heaped together, is as easily and carelessly scattered. Many of Mr. Davies’ confessions of American begging experiences are almost incredible in their suggestion of opulence. An hour or two in streets of modest comfort will yield, to the experienced workman, a profusion of good things--money, clothes, rich and pleasant food. Free rides by “beating” the various trains, transformation with changing climate of summer and winter from the north to the south, occasional interludes in local gaols, where the officials, being paid by the number of their captives, offer increasing attractions to those who will condescend to accept such hospitalities, yield a healthful and variable existence of adventure and repose. The companions of the road offer no despicable advantages. There is, indeed, no “honour among thieves”; they rob each other with effrontery, and make no assertion of chivalry or fine and decent living. But they are generous in their sharing of the booty with their companions, and possess a ready sociability which leads them to partnerships and associations of some enduring value. The two unforgivable crimes are work and thrift. Effort and Accumulation--the gods of the working world--have become idols to be trampled on. Yet, in the underworld, the appeal to compassion is still irresistible. The cattlemen who bring the living food of England across the Atlantic to Liverpool “are recognised as the scum of America, a wild, lawless class of people, on whom,” says Mr. Davies, “the scum of Europe unscrupulously impose.” Mr. Davies had frequently made the journey, and tells horrible tales of the indifferent cruelty to the beasts. Habitually the cattlemen arrive, fresh from such degrading experience, upon a city of poverty. Habitually they part with their scanty earnings in gifts to that poverty when they arrive. “Having kind hearts, they are soon rendered penniless by the importunities of beggars.” “These wild but kind-hearted men,” is the testimony, “grown exceedingly proud by a comparison of the comfortable homes of America with these scenes of extreme poverty in Liverpool and other large seaports, give and give of their few shillings, until they are themselves reduced to the utmost want.”