kick him, and then he would breathe a little harder
and quicker.

At last a passer-by, feeling something wet beneath his feet, looked down,
and found that he was standing in a pool of blood, and, looking to see
where it came from, found that it flowed in a thick, dark stream from the
step on which the dog was lying.

Then he stooped down and examined the dog, and the dog opened its eyes
sleepily and looked at him, gave a grin which may have implied pleasure,
or may have implied irritation at being disturbed, and died.

A crowd collected, and they turned the dead body of the dog over on its
side, and saw a fearful gash in the groin, out of which oozed blood, and
other things. The proprietor of the shop said the animal had been there
for over an hour.

I have known the poor to die in that same grim, silent way--not the poor
that you, my delicately-gloved Lady Bountiful and my very excellent Sir
Simon DoGood, know, or that you would care to know; not the poor who
march in processions with banners and collection-boxes; not the poor that
clamour round your soup kitchens and sing hymns at your tea meetings; but
the poor that you don't know are poor until the tale is told at the
coroner's inquest--the silent, proud poor who wake each morning to
wrestle with Death till night-time, and who, when at last he overcomes
them, and, forcing them down on the rotting floor of the dim attic,
strangles them, still die with their teeth tight shut.

There was a boy I came to know when I was living in the East End of
London. He was not a nice boy by any means. He was not quite so clean
as are the good boys in the religious magazines, and I have known a
sailor to stop him in the street and reprove him for using indelicate
language.

He and his mother and the baby, a sickly infant of about five months old,
lived in a cellar down a turning off Three Colt Street. I am not quite
sure what had become of the father. I rather think he had been
"converted," and had gone off round the country on a preaching tour. The
lad earned six shillings a week as an errand-boy; and the mother stitched
trousers, and on days when she was feeling strong and energetic would
often make as much as tenpence, or even a shilling. Unfortunately, there
were days when the four bare walls would chase each other round and
round, and the candle seem a faint speck of light, a very long way off;
and the frequency of these caused the family income for the week to
occ