came near to people they would hold out their shells and say,
'Please to remember the grotto!' And people gave them money to help them
on their way and to buy candles for the grotto, hoping that the poor
people would get there safely and come back cured.

"So it came to pass that whenever people saw a man with an oyster shell,
they knew he was going or returning from St. James's tomb in Spain,
and they helped him. The custom of building grottos on St. James's Day
spread to many countries besides Spain. In Russia they build very fine
grottos. At length the custom came to England, and you boys and girls do
what other boys and girls have done for many years in other countries,
and in reality you celebrate the death of a great and good man."

The children were very silent for a while; the cripple boy looked at me
with tears in his eyes, and I knew what his tears expressed. I gave
him a shilling, but he did not speak; to all the other children who had
built grottos I gave threepence each, and there was joy in that corner
of Bethnal Green.

There is always something pathetic about play in the underworld. We feel
that there is something wanting in it, perhaps that something would come
into it, if there were more opportunities of real and competitive play.
Keeping shops, or teaching schools may do for girls to play at, but a
lad, if he is any good, wants something more robust.

I often find cripple boys playing "tip-cat," another game upon which
the law has its eye, or hurrying along on crutches after something that
serves as a football, and getting there in time, too, for a puny kick.
But that kick, little as it is, thrills the poor chap, and he feels that
he has been playing. I am sure that football is going to play a great
part in the physical salvation of Tom, Dick and Harry, but they must
have other places than the streets in which to learn and practise the
game.

We have heard a great deal about the playing-fields of public schools;
we are told that we owe our national safety to them; perhaps it
is correct, but I really do not know. But this I do know, that the
non-provision of playing-fields, or grounds for the male youthful poor,
is a national danger and a menace to activity, endurance, health and
pluck.

Nothing saves them now but the freehold of the streets. Rob them of this
without giving them something better, and we shall speedily have a race
of flat-footed, flat-chested, round-shouldered poor, with no brain