arried on within. Here you may see how men have multiplied toil for
toil's sake, have wrought to devise work superfluous, have worn their
lives away in imagining new forms of weariness. The energy, the
ingenuity daily put forth in these grimy burrows task the brain's power
of wondering. But that those who sit here through the livelong day,
through every season, through all the years of the life that is granted
them, who strain their eyesight, who overtax their muscles, who nurse
disease in their frames, who put resolutely from them the thought of
what existence _might_ be--that these do it all without prospect or
hope of reward save the permission to eat and sleep and bring into the
world other creatures to strive with them for bread, surely that
thought is yet more marvellous.

Workers in metal, workers in glass and in enamel, workers in weed,
workers in every substance on earth, or from the waters under the
earth, that can be made commercially valuable. In Clerkenwell the
demand is not so much for rude strength as for the cunning fingers and
the contriving brain. The inscriptions on the house-fronts would make
you believe that you were in a region of gold and silver and precious
stones. In the recesses of dim byways, where sunshine and free air are
forgotten things, where families herd together in dear-rented garrets
and cellars, craftsmen are for ever handling jewellery, shaping bright
ornaments for the necks and arms of such as are born to the joy of
life. Wealth inestimable is ever flowing through these workshops, and
the hands that have been stained with gold-dust may, as likely as not,
some day extend themselves in petition for a crust. In this house, as
the announcement tells you, business is carried on by a trader in
diamonds, and next door is a den full of children who wait for their
day's one meal until their mother has come home with her chance
earnings. A strange enough region wherein to wander and muse.
Inextinguishable laughter were perchance the fittest result of such
musing; yet somehow the heart grows heavy, somehow the blood is
troubled in its course, and the pulses begin to throb hotly.

Amid the crowds of workpeople, Jane Snowdon made what speed she might.
It was her custom, whenever dispatched on an errand, to run till she
could run no longer, then to hasten along panting until breath and
strength were recovered. When it was either of the Peckovers who sent
her, she knew that reprimand was inevita