to Children in London during its five years'
existence, not one has come from a City missionary. When speaking of the
starvation of children to one of them, he said to me, "Yes, I knew two
cases last winter, one after another; they were just starved to death. It
was a shocking affair." To which I replied, in surprised indignation, "Why
did you not tell us?" "Oh," he replied with a perfectly satisfied air, "if
I were to meddle in things like that, I could not do my more spiritual
work."

"I know several children marked for death," said a London vicar's
daughter, and his district visitor, the other day, "but I cannot give
their parents' names. We should be subject to such persecution if we were
to interfere." The fact that

There's a friend of little children,
Above the bright blue sky,

ought to fall like a warning thunderbolt out of heaven on such people's
ears! I have repeated these two sayings, because they speak volumes on the
"religious" surroundings of tortured child life in England. Both of them
referred to children being deliberately starved to death.

I will give you a sample of the condition in which some of these starved
children, unseen, and quietly, die.

It was in winter, in a bare room. The child, a girl of seven, lay on a
mattress, had but two garments on: a chemise and a print frock. There was
no blanket, no coverlet, no sheet. The window was curtainless; the nights
were frosty. There was no fire in the grate, nor had there ever been
through all the long illness. There was no food, no physic, not even a cup
of water to drink. Her bones almost protruded through the bed-sores, which
added misery to her misery. She lay with her eyes shut all day,
occasionally moistening with her dry tongue her still drier lips.
Downstairs sat the pair with whom she had lived from her birth--her father
and mother. They brought her no share of their tea nor crumb of their
bread. They had blankets for _their_ beds, and fire for _their_ meals.
Their house was still. You pass a door like theirs; all is clean. The
curate nods as he goes by; and the district visitor calls; and the child
hears the church bell on Sundays, till she can hear it no more. For she is
starving to death in a Christian country.

It is little children who are made most to suffer.

The ages of the victims of the most atrocious cases is almost always low.
Nor are small families exempt. The size of families in which the most
horrible outrages take