yards--they call them gardens in Matilda Street--are filled with sheds and wondrous home-made constructions, in which fancy poultry and rabbits are kept. Even the roofs of the houses bristle with pigeon-lofts and artful-looking structures for the capture of wandering birds. Should a stray pigeon alight on one of these contrivances, attracted by the hemp seed which is profusely scattered thereon, or by the presence of a decoy securely fastened by the leg, a sudden click may be heard, and the bird finds himself in an instant imprisoned in an artful arrangement of wire walls, which has closed on him with the rapidity of a conjuring trick. Matilda Street is a decidedly poor neighbourhood; but, strange to say, it is a favourite "pitch" for the bogus starving British workman and his interesting family, when he is upon what he terms the "kinchin lay." The man generally goes barefoot, his face is half covered by a stubbly crop of bristles, which pathetically indicate that he cannot even afford the cheap luxury of the British workman--a ha'penny shave. He doesn't let his beard grow--that would look far too comfortable; artful gashes in his trousers exhibit his knees, which appeal in a startling manner to the feelings of the benevolent; either elbow is clasped to show how he suffers from the inclemency of the weather; by his side walks his pattern wife, who always wears a large white apron; she invariably carries an infant of tender years; at either side of the pair march the rest of the family. They keep to the centre of the road; the woman watches the windows of one side of the street, the man those of the other; and from morning till night they howl a single verse of some hymn with monotonous obstinacy, varying it with a plaintive lament that "They've got no work to do." They are quite right in choosing places like Matilda Street, for there is little or no traffic to interrupt the effect of the procession; besides, in such a place as this no policeman would interrupt them; and, strange to say, it is in shy and poor neighbourhoods that the "kinchin lay" reaps its richest harvest.