Most of the men slept. Some had no overcoats, and lay huddled with their tousled heads on hassocks. Others had placed their coats over their heads. One or two wore spats, and appeared from their clothes to be prosperous. Then you looked at their boots, and read a story of tramp, tramp, tramp. One elderly man, awakened suddenly, shot out an arm to look at his wrist-watch. But there was no watch there, and he drew his hand swiftly under his coat again as though it hurt. * * * "Some extraordinary dramas have been acted on the steps outside in the small hours," said a young man officially connected with the church. "Once a girl was saved from white-slavers; once I brought in a boy so blue with cold that I had to open the furnace doors without delay, and thaw him. Most of the 'down-and-outs' know this church. Many of them we manage to set up again, some sink back or just disappear. Yet we never lose faith in human nature. A homeless person is allowed to shelter here only three nights in succession. After that we try to find some other abode, so you see our visitors are always changing." He opened a door, and I found myself in a cellar full of old clothes. Boxes of collars lay on the floor. A knowing looking silk hat crowned a pile of old hats. Women's skirts and men's trousers hung from pegs. Boots and shoes stood neatly dressed by the right. "This is our wardrobe," he said. "Our first principle is to give a homeless person food and then whatever clothes we can. You can't expect to hear the truth on an empty stomach." "Are you often deceived by people who drift in here out of the night?" "Now and then. It's nothing compared with the friends we make, the delightful characters we discover when the ache and pain of hardship have worn off. We divide men into three groups: Those who have been to prison and have a grudge against the world; those who went to the war as boys and came back men with boys' minds; and those who simply will not work and can't run straight. We have heard every fairy tale in the world, and we know a scrounger at sight!" * * * I tip-toed back through the white crypt. The pale girl was still awake. The grey-haired woman still slept--old, worn-out, uncared-for, and life gone by. Men slept and stirred uneasily as if afraid of the dawn that was stealing on to draw them again into the battle. How many would rise gloriously; how many fall? We talk of human nature in the rough, heartbeats, life. Here it is in the middle of London every night, each sleeper a real drama of struggle, each man and woman midway in that Valley of the Shadow through which all lives, spiritually or materially, must pass. "We don't care what they are," said the young man. "If they are in trouble, that is enough." I hardly heard him, for I was thinking that in this white place is the Spirit of Christ. A Bit of Bagdad