e would buy it,
and they did not like to send the poor beast to the butcher.

In these various Shelters and Institutions I saw some strange
characters. One had been an electrical engineer, educated under
Professor Owen, at Cardiff College. He came into money, and gambled
away L13,000 on horse-racing, although he told me that he won as much
as L8,000 on one Ascot meeting. His subsequent history is a story in
itself, one too long to set out; but the end of it, in his own words,
was 'Four years ago I came here, and, thank God! I am going on all
right.'

Why do not the writers of naturalistic novels study Salvation Army
Shelters? In any one of them they would find more material than could
be used up in ten lifetimes; though, personally, I confess I am
content to read such stories in the secret annals of the various
Institutions.

Another man, a very pleasant and humorous person, who was once a
Church worker and a singer in the choir, etc., when, in his own words,
he used 'to put on religion with his Sunday clothes and take it off
again with them,' came to grief through sheer love of amusement, such
as that which is to be found in music-halls and theatres. His habit
was to spend the money of an insurance company by which he was
employed, in taking out the young lady to whom he was engaged, to such
entertainments. Ultimately, of course, he was found out, and, when
starving on the road, determined to commit suicide. The Salvationists
found him in the nick of time, and now he is foreman of their
paper-collecting yard.

Another, at the ripe age of twenty-four, had been twenty-seven times
in prison. His father was in prison, his eldest brother committed
suicide in prison by throwing himself over the banisters. Also, he had
two brothers at present undergoing penal servitude, who, when he was a
little fellow, used to pass him through windows to open doors in
houses which they were burgling.

I suggested that it was a poor game and that he had better give it up.
He answered:--'I shall never do it again, sir, God helping me.'
Really I think he meant what he said.

Another, in the Chepstow Street Shelter, where he acted as
night-watchman, was discharged from Portland, after serving a fifteen
years' sentence for manslaughter. His trouble was that he killed a man
in a fight, and as he had fought him before and had a grudge against
him, was very nearly hanged for his pains. This man earned L9 in some
way or other during his sent