gement of the library, which is now
becoming a most fascinating place, under the management of a librarian
chosen from the neighborhood, when he asked me to go and take a message
to a carpenter who has been giving us voluntary help in the evening,
after his day's work. He thought that as it was the dinner hour, and the
man worked in the dock close by, I might find him at home. I went off
to the model lodging-house where I was told to look for him, mounted the
common stairs, and knocked at his door. Nobody seemed to hear me, and as
the door was ajar I pushed it open.

'Inside was a curious sight. The table was spread with the mid-day meal,
a few bloaters, some potatoes, and bread. Round the table stood four
children, the eldest about fourteen, and the youngest six or seven. At
one end of it stood the carpenter himself in his working apron, a brawny
Saxon, bowed a little by his trade. Before him was a plate of bread, and
his horny hands were resting on it. The street was noisy; they had not
heard my knock; and as I pushed open the door there was an old coat
hanging over the corner of it which concealed me.

'Something in the attitudes of all concerned reminded me, kept me where
I was, silent.

'The father lifted his right hand.

'The Master said, "This do in remembrance of Me!"

'The children stooped for a moment in silence, then the youngest
said slowly, in a little softened cockney voice that touched me
extraordinarily,--

'"_Jesus, we remember Thee always!_"

'It was the appointed response. As she spoke I recollected the child
perfectly at Elsmere's class. I also remembered that she had no mother;
that her mother had died of cancer in June, visited and comforted to the
end by Elsmere and his wife.

'Well, the great question of course remains--is there a sufficient
strength of _feeling_ and _conviction_ behind these things? If so,
after all, everything was new once, and Christianity was but modified
Judaism.'

December 22.

'I believe I shall soon be as deep in this matter as Elsmere. In Elgood
Street great preparations are going on for Christmas. But it will be a
new sort of Christmas. We shall hear very little, it seems, of angels
and shepherds, and a great deal of the humble childhood of a little
Jewish boy whose genius grown to maturity transformed the Western world.
To see Elsmere, with his boys and girls about him, trying to make them
feel themselves t