in the present case there is also the
knowledge that these children are under guardianship at once kind and
wise. Presently the back benches began to fill with a congregation such
as no other church in London might show. Crushed-looking women in limp
bonnets, scanty shawls, and much-patched dresses crept quietly in. With
them, though not in their company, came men of all ages, and of a
general level of ragged destitution--a gaunt, haggard, hungry, and
hopeless congregation as ever went to church on a Sunday morning. Some
had passed the night in the Refuge attached to the institution; many had
come straight from the casual wards; others had spent the long hours
since sundown in the streets; and one, a hale old man who diffused
around him an air of respectability and comfort, was a lodger at
Clerkenwell Workhouse. His snuff-coloured coat with two brass buttons at
the back was the solitary whole garment visible in this section of the
congregation.

It was his "Sunday out" and having had his breakfast at the workhouse,
he had, by way of distraction, come to spend the morning and eat his
lunch at the Field Lane Institution.

One man might be forgiven if he slept all through the sermon, for, as he
explained, he had "passed a very bad night." He had settled himself to
sleep on various doorsteps, with the fog for a blanket and the railings
for pillow. But there appeared what in his experience was a quite
uncommon activity on the part of the police, and he had been "moved on"
from place to place till morning broke, and he had not slept a wink or
had half an hour's rest for the sole of his foot.

There were not many of the labouring class among the couple of hundred
men who made up this miserable company. They were chiefly broken-down
people, who, as tradesmen, clerks, or even professional men, had
gradually sunk till they came to regard admission to the casual ward at
night as the cherished hope that kept them up as they shuffled their
way through the day. One man, who over a marvellous costume of rags
carried the mark of respectability comprehended in a thin black silk
necktie tied around a collarless neck, is the son of a late colonel of
artillery, and has a brother at the present time a lieutenant in one of
her Majesty's ships. After leading a reckless life, he turned his
musical acquirements to account by joining the band of a marching
regiment. Unfortunately, the death of his grandfather, two years ago,
made him uncontro