absent in the country for a week or so, and the
Scripture-reader afraid, in his absence, to give much information. He
ventured, however, to show me the industrial school, where some forty
children were employed in making match-boxes for Messrs. Bryant and May.
However, as I was told that the incumbent in question objected very
decidedly to refuges and ragged schools, and thought it much better for
the poor to strain a point and send their little ones to school, I felt
that was hardly the regimen to suit my Arabian friends, who were
evidently teeming in that locality. I was even returning home with the
view of getting further geographical particulars of this Eastern Arabia
Petraea, when, as a last resource, I was directed to a refuge in
Commercial Street. I rang here, and found myself in the presence of the
veritable Miss Macpherson herself, with whom I passed two pleasant and
instructive hours.

At starting, Miss Macpherson rather objected to being made the subject
of an article--first of all, for the very comprehensible reason that
such publicity would draw down upon her a host of visitors; and when I
suggested that visitors probably meant funds, she added a second, and
not quite so comprehensible an objection--that these funds themselves
might alloy the element of Faith in which the work had been so far
carried on. She had thoroughly imbibed the spirit of Mueller, whose Home
at Bristol was professedly the outcome of Faith and Prayer alone.
However, on my promise to publish only such particulars--name, locality,
&c.--as she might approve, this lady gave me the details of her truly
wonderful work. The building in which I found her had been erected to
serve as large warehouses, and here 110 of the most veritable Arabs were
housed, fed, taught, and converted into Christians, when so convertible.
Should they prove impressionable, Miss Macpherson then contemplates
their emigration to Canada. Many had already been sent out; and her idea
was to extend her operations in this respect: not, be it observed, to
cast hundreds of the scum of the East End of London upon Canada--a
proceeding to which the Canadians would very naturally object--but to
form a Home on that side to be fed from the Homes on this, and so to
remove from the old scenes of vice and temptation those who had been
previously trained in the refuges here. She has it in contemplation to
take a large hotel in Canada, and convert it into an institution of this
kind; an