this they do; and once their efforts show results, they never lose
sight of him.

Many heartbreaking cases go by the orderly's box at the door, and I
would like to set some of those young Oxford philanthropists who write
pamphlets or articles in _The New Age_ on social subjects by the door
for a night. I think they would learn a lot of things they never knew
before. Often, at two or three o'clock in the morning, the scouts will
bring in a bundle of rain-sodden rags that hardly looks as if it could
ever have been a man. How can you deal scientifically or religiously
with that?

You can't. But the rank and file of The Salvation Army, with its almost
uncanny knowledge of men, has found a better, happier way. I have spent
many nights in various of their Shelters, and I should like to put on
record the fine spirit which I have found prevailing there. It is a
spirit of camaraderie. In other charitable institutions you will find
timidity, the cowed manner, sometimes symptoms of actual fear. But never
at the Salvation Army. There every new-comer is a pal, until he is
proved to be unworthy of that name. There is no suspicion, no
underhanded questioning, no brow-beating: things which I have never
found absent from any other organized charity.

The Salvation Army method is food, warmth, mateyness; and their answer
to their critics, and their reward, is the sturdy, respectable artisan
who comes along a few months later to shake hands with them and give his
own services in helping them in their work.

* * * * *

Far away West, through the exultant glamour of theatre and restaurant
London, through the solid, melancholic greys of Bayswater, you find a
little warm corner called Shepherd's Bush. You find also Notting Dale,
where the bad burglars live, but we will talk of that in another
chapter. Back of Shepherd's Bush is a glorious slum, madly lit, uncouth,
and entirely wonderful.

To Shepherd's Bush I went one evening. I went to fairyland. I went to
tell stories and to lead music-hall choruses. No; not at the Shepherd's
Bush Empire, but at a dirty little corrugated hall in a locked byway.
Some time ago, the usual charitably minded person, finding time hang
heavy on her hands, or having some private grief which she desired to
forget in bustle and activity, started a movement for giving children
happy evenings. I have not been to one of the centres, and I am sure I
should not like to go. I dislike