It is a poverty-stricken, squalid room. In the centre is a rickety table, round which the widow and her three remaining children are gathered, making a scanty meal before they put on their black to follow the dead lad to the cemetery. The thin stew has been taken from the fire, and is being served out on chipped and cracked plates to the children, and in the centre of the table at which the family are dining lies the corpse. I am not inventing the details to paint a picture of life among the poor--I am giving the actual facts as discovered by the School Board officer of the district, who called to inquire why one of the children had not attended school the previous day. No one seeing the elaborate and expensive funeral that started a couple of hours later from the house could have imagined the scene there was to be witnessed behind the brick wall. The living and the dead had been together in that one room for over a week. There are many reasons why funerals are not hurried in the poorer districts. Here is a case in which one was delayed for three weeks. Mrs. Jones's baby died just as it was completing its first year's experience of life. Mr. Jones drew the money from the burial club and gave an order to the undertaker. But before the day fixed for the funeral arrived Mr. Jones had lost half the money by backing horses that didn't win. In his distress he spent the balance at the public-house. "No money, no funeral," was the undertaker's motto, so the baby uncoffined, but shrouded in a sheet, was left in the cupboard. Mrs. Jones, when the disaster was made known to her, told her story to her poor neighbours. They generously clubbed together, and in a few days they handed her the needed amount. In her gratitude Mrs. Jones invited a few of her neighbours, who had not subscribed, to drink the health of those who had. The health-drinking affected Mrs. Jones so much that returning home she was absent-minded, and the balance of the funeral money was stolen from her by a thief who had followed her out of the public-house. The body lay in the cupboard for another week, and the news of the delayed funeral reaching the authorities, an official called, and baby was at last taken away and buried by the parish. That was the greatest punishment that could have been inflicted on the parents. If a modern Asmodeus, instead of lifting the roof, would take us around London and remove the fourth walls, we should be astonished at the tragedy, or moved to laughter by the farcical comedy, that would be suddenly revealed. If, for instance, the wall were down to-night in front of this "desirable residence" in a West End square, we should see into the bedroom of the son of the house. The family have retired for the night. Up in his own room the son, a good-looking, elegant, and cultured young man of five-and-twenty, is gloating over his treasures.