ute for Canada; and it now strikes me that some account of
the voyage out, in the shape of excerpts from the letters of the devoted
ladies who themselves accompanied our Arabs across the Atlantic, may
prove interesting; while, at the same time, a calculation of their
probable success in their new life and homes may not improbably
stimulate those who cannot give their time, to give at least their
countenance, and it may be, their material aid, to a scheme which
recommends itself to all our sympathies--the permanent reclamation of
the little homeless wanderers of our London streets.

The strange old rambling "Home" in Commercial Street, built originally
for warehouses, then used as a cholera hospital, and now the Arab
Refuge, presented a strange appearance during the week before the
departure of the chosen hundred. On the ground-floor were the packages
of the young passengers; on the first floor the "new clothes, shirts,
and stockings, sent by kind lady friends from all parts of the kingdom,
trousers and waistcoats made by the widows, and the boots and pilot
jackets made by the boys themselves." The dormitory was the great
store-closet for all the boys' bags filled with things needful on board
ship; and on the top floor, we can well imagine, the last day was a
peculiarly melancholy one. The work attendant upon the boys' last meal
at the Refuge was over, and there, in the long narrow kitchen, stood the
cook wiping away her tears with her apron, and the six little waiting
maids around them, with the novel feeling of having nothing to
do--there, where so much cutting, buttering, and washing-up had been the
order of the day. When the summons came to start, the police had great
difficulty in clearing a way for the boys to the vans through the
surging mass of East London poverty. Some of the little match-box makers
ran all the three miles from Commercial Street to St. Pancras Station
to see the very last of their boy-friends.

Derby was the stopping-place on the journey to Liverpool, and the
attention of passengers and guards was arrested by this strange company
gathering on the platform at midnight and singing two of the favourite
Refuge hymns. Liverpool was reached at 4 A.M., and the boys filed off in
fours, with their canvas bags over their shoulders, to the river side,
where their wondering eyes beheld the _Peruvian_, which was to bear them
to their new homes.

At this point, Miss Macpherson's sister--who is carrying on t