The next house was filled with beggars. The rooms were filthy; and upon entering them in succession, the women and children commenced in the cadgers' whine to beg. "Why don't you wash your children?" was inquired of a mother, whose four little ones were as black as sweeps. "We haven't a penny," was the reply, "to buy soap with, and the little dears are so uncomfortable like when they wakes up, until they rubs their faces well with their hands, which freshens them up." Their hard begging prevented religious conversation. In the front parlour a man, clothed in filthy raiment, was smoking his pipe, while the wife was engaged in sweeping with an almost hairless broom. An attempt to speak to them upon the Gospel message provoked an outburst of low abuse from them both: the woman, who was evidently from the Emerald Isle, followed the visitor to the door, giving a long sweep with her broom; and then flourishing it over his head as he stepped into the Court, exclaimed, "Och, and sure and that's the way I sweep out rubbish!" After failing to convey religious instruction to the people at the next house, where the woman and youth abused, and the children yelled as he passed out, the young Missionary left the place in a state of mind exactly opposite to that in which he had entered it in the morning. A sense of inefficiency, of utter disqualification for the work, had taken possession of his mind and damped his zeal. To have instructed the respectable poor--to have removed the difficulties of men in error, would have been a pleasure; but to evangelize such a people as the dwellers in Paradise Court and its surroundings seemed hopeless. Besides the offensiveness of the work--the thought of spending six or more hours daily in those wretched dwellings, subjected to risk of contagion, insult, and personal violence, and that with such feeble hope of benefiting the people, produced a sense of regret that the effort had been made. So powerfully did these reasons act, that the Missionary availed himself of the consideration that Saturday would be an inconvenient day for the people, and stayed away; but on Sunday afternoon, about three o'clock, he approached the Court with a faint heart, and a bundle of tracts in his hand. [Illustration: "Where the woman and youth abused, and the children yelled as he passed out."]