ers, but there is rent and
gas and wear and tear of all sorts, and she buys bob veal and stale
fish and rotten vegetables and alum bread, trying to make the ends
meet. I've been there and tasted the messes that come to her table, and
I would drink too if forced to live on them. She's got sense, a
little--enough not to fly in a rage when I told her the food was enough
to make a drunkard of every man in the house. 'I can't help it,' she
said, crying. 'I've only just so much money, and the girl spoils most
of what I do get.'--'Cook yourself,' I said.--'I can't,' she answered:
'I don't know any better than the girl. I'll do anything you say.' I am
not a cook: I could not tell her anything. 'Go to cooking-school,' I
said: 'it'll pay you.'--'I've neither time nor money,' she said; and
there it ended. What's to be done? I've just come round the market. It
is dinner-time, and I think every other man was eating pie. The same
money might have bought him a bowl of strong soup or a plate of savory
and nourishing stew, if there had been anybody with sense enough to
provide it. Up and down, in and out, wherever I go, I see that cooks
are the missionaries needed. Come in here a moment."

I followed up the steps of a "Home" for sailors, planned to give them a
refuge from the traps known as "sailors' boarding-houses." The long
dining-room we entered was spotlessly clean, and some thirty men were
dining. I looked for a moment as my friend spoke with some one sitting
at the head of the table, then passed out.

"You saw," he said, "plenty of food, and all clean as a whistle, but
what sort? Steak fried to a crisp, soggy potatoes, underdone cabbage
and pork, bread rank with alum, and coffee whose only merit is warmth.
Those men are filled, but not fed. The bread alone is condensed
dyspepsia. In an hour the weaker stomachs will have what they call 'a
goneness.' They will crave something, and poor R---- will have half a
dozen of them half drunk or wholly so on his hands by night. He will
pray and exhort, and bundle them up to the Mission if he can, and cry
as he tells me how they will give way and yield to the devil whether or
no. And so it goes. Women must get hold of this thing. It's the first
item in your temperance crusade, and till the people have better food
there is no law or influence that can make them give up drinking. I
wouldn't if I were they."

Here the talk ended. My impetuous friend disappeared around a corner,
and I went my