-thinning diseases (as rheumatism), sometimes say they would rather
go without food than coal. Rather emptiness than chill.

These women know where there are hoardings erected by builders, where
shop-fronts are being rebuilt, where fires have taken place, where
alterations are proceeding; they know them as the birds know the places
where they are likely to find food, and visit them day by day for the
scraps of wood and splinters that drop on the pavement.

Or they send their children, ragged urchins, battling for a knot of
pine-wood.

The terror of frost to these creatures is great indeed. Frost is the
King of Terrors to them--not Death; they sleep and live with death
constantly, the dead frequently in the room with the living, and with
the unborn that is near birth.

Alere's ten pounds helped them. The drunkard's wife knew that Flamma,
the drinker, would certainly give her the silver in his pocket.

The ragged urchins, battling for a knot of pine-wood, knew that they
could charm the pennies and the threepenny bits out of his waistcoat;
the baked potatoes and the roasted chestnuts looked so nice on the
street stove.

Wretched girls whose power of tempting had gone, and with it their means
of subsistence, begged, and not in vain, of shaky Alere Flamma. There
are many of these wretches in Fleet Street. There is no romance about
them to attract the charity of the world.

Once a flower-girl, selling flowers without a licence in the street, was
charged by the police. How this harshness to the flower-girl--the human
representation of Flora--roused up sentiment in her behalf!

But not every starving girl has the fortune to rouse up sentiment and to
be fed. Their faces disfigured with eruptions, their thin shoulders,
their dry, disordered hair--hair never looks nice unless soft with its
natural oil--their dingy complexions, their threadbare shawls, tempt no
one. They cannot please, therefore they must starve.

The good turn from them with horror--Are they not sin made manifest? The
trembling hand of Alere fed them.

Because the boys bawl do you suppose they are happy? It is curious that
people should associate noise with a full stomach. The shoeblack boys,
the boys that are gathered into institutions and training ships, are
expected to bawl and shout their loudest at the annual fetes when
visitors are present. Your bishops and deans forthwith feel assured that
their lives are consequently joyous.

Why then do they