hat they vote for, and, by God!
they deserve nothing better! They are being beaten with whips of their
own choosing, and if I had my way they should be chastised with
scorpions. For them, the present system means joyless drudgery,
semi-starvation, rags and premature death; and they vote for it and
uphold it. Let them have what they vote for! Let them drudge and let
them starve!'

These words kept ringing in his ears as he walked through the crowded
streets early one fine evening a few days before Christmas. The shops
were all brilliantly lighted for the display of their Christmas stores,
and the pavements and even the carriageways were thronged with
sightseers.

Barrington was specially interested in the groups of shabbily dressed
men and women and children who gathered in the roadway in front of the
poulterers' and butchers' shops, gazing at the meat and the serried
rows of turkeys and geese decorated with coloured ribbons and rosettes.
He knew that to come here and look at these things was the only share
many of these poor people would have of them, and he marvelled greatly
at their wonderful patience and abject resignation.

But what struck him most of all was the appearance of many of the
women, evidently working men's wives. Their faded, ill-fitting
garments and the tired, sad expressions on their pale and careworn
faces. Some of them were alone; others were accompanied by little
children who trotted along trustfully clinging to their mothers' hands.
The sight of these poor little ones, their utter helplessness and
dependence, their patched unsightly clothing and broken boots, and the
wistful looks on their pitiful faces as they gazed into the windows of
the toy-shops, sent a pang of actual physical pain to his heart and
filled his eyes with tears. He knew that these children--naked of joy
and all that makes life dear--were being tortured by the sight of the
things that were placed so cruelly before their eyes, but which they
were not permitted to touch or to share; and, like Joseph of old, his
heart yearned over to his younger brethren.

He felt like a criminal because he was warmly clad and well fed in the
midst of all this want and unhappiness, and he flushed with shame
because he had momentarily faltered in his devotion to the noblest
cause that any man could be privileged to fight for--the uplifting of
the disconsolate and the oppressed.

He presently came to a large toy shop outside which severa