“Whence come these men? What manner of city was this that wasted able-bodied men on so paltry a task? “Later that evening, when in the crossing currents of the streets, my cab came to a halt, I caught another fleeting glance at London misery. A naked, dirt-caked arm, thrust from a sleeveless coat, touched my shoulder; a haggard face peered into the cab window, and a voice harsh with anxiety asked, ‘Can I ’ave the luggage, sir?’ As the cab wound through the mazes of the London traffic, I saw this tattered man doggedly running behind us. Not once did he lose sight of the cab. At the hotel he was waiting, breathless. “‘It’s mine, sir,’ he panted. ‘You promised me the luggage, sir.’ “For the chance of earning a shilling at work which did not need him, this wretched man had followed me through tortuous miles of London streets. What a city it was! “I did not wish to see deeper into this abyss,” writes Mr. Weyl. “I had not come to England to view bottomless misery. But what is everywhere cannot be hid. On the following days I saw in street after street workless, homeless miserable men with broken shoes and dropping rags of clothes. I saw abject women, with trailing, bedraggled skirts, and with a flat sterile vacancy of expression, more tragic than despair. There were drunken men, too, and sodden women, and files of men--or of what had once been men--waiting outside bakers’ and butchers’ shops for crusts and refuse. The halt, the blind, the unemployed, the shifty beggars, and the wretches too timid to beg, passed in an unending procession. Long before sunset the lines had been formed for admission to the casual wards of the almshouses. “‘It’s deplorable,’ commented my English friend (he was a doctor with a fashionable practice and aristocratic pro-possessions), ‘still every country has its poverty. Even in the States----’ “‘Yes,’ I admitted, ‘It is not for us to throw stones.’ “Later, however, as on our silent homeward walk I summed up all the dismal impressions of the day. I began to feel that after all there was a difference. American poverty was overwhelming, but it was not everywhere, and it was not so hopeless. Men did escape from American slums, and their children escaped. “But the English slum was a prison, in which the fallen man and his children and grandchildren rotted. There was a droop, a sagging to these people; an inexpressible indifference to surroundings, an utter self-abandonment. You could seek out poverty anywhere, but in London it obtruded itself--stark, menacing, unescapable, like the naked, dirt-caked arm of the superfluous wretch who had followed my hansom.” * * * * * _Prisoners to Build Roads._--It is an assured fact, according to the New Orleans Picayune, that a model road built by convict labor will be constructed connecting New Orleans with Kenner. This will take off four miles from the present railroad and other routes to this thriving section.