It is not, however, my intention further to describe, in these pages, the harrowing scenes I witnessed while so occupied. Were I a commissioner, appointed to report to a Committee of Inquiry upon the condition of the poor, I should, it is true, have painful, revolting, and even incredible facts to recount. I could give chapter and verse in proof of inconceivable infamy. I could give instances of men, women, and even children living under circumstances more degrading than could be found in any so-called savage race. I should, in common honesty, be compelled to admit that by many of these who are most in evidence, as in search of work--work is the very last thing in the world that they really desire to find. Hymn-bawling in the streets is the nearest most of them have ever come to earning their bread by the sweat of their brow; a few hours processioning and posing as unemployed, the hardest day's work many of them ever did. And yet, admitting all this, and speaking as one who has seen something of the poor, and of their homes, I say, and in all sincerity, of the very poor as a whole, that I find it hard to express my admiration, my respect, and my reverence for the unselfishness, the courage, and the nobility which I have known them to display. There came a time at last when the strenuousness of the work I was doing began to tell terribly upon me. It has been said that profound sympathies are always in association with keen sensibilities, and that keen sensibilities expose their possessor to a depth of anguish utterly unintelligible to those who are differently constituted. In my own case the hopelessness of the struggle in which I was engaged weighed constantly upon me. Men and women--and, worst of all, little children--were starving literally by the thousand, and all my efforts could do no more than bring relief each day to perhaps a dozen. My money was gone; the health by which I could earn more money was fast giving way, and what I had accomplished, and could hope to accomplish, seemed, when compared with what remained to be done, like the taking of a drop of water from the sea. One evening, after visiting a case of destitution and misery so harrowing that it was only by a tremendous effort I was able to control myself, and to speak cheerfully and hopefully to the sufferers, I came out into the dark street, and, once alone, to my unspeakable disgust and dismay, burst into tears. When a man of strong physique, normal by nature, and in no sense hysterical, gets into a condition so over-wrought as this, he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, as was proved in my own person. The next morning I was so seriously ill that I was compelled to keep my bed for some days, after which I was ordered to Brighton. * * * * *