is organization of charity saves such a lot of money: where people
used to give away five pounds they now pay five shillings.

Nothing like saving money. And, besides, you walk about with a clear
conscience. No matter how many maimed men, or disagreeable women, or
ragged boys you see, you can stroll on comfortably and never think about
them; your charity is organized.

If the German thinkers had not found out twenty years ago that there was
no Devil, one would be inclined to ascribe this spurious, lying, false,
and abominable mockery to the direct instigation of a Satan.

The organization of charity! The very nature of charity is
spontaneousness.

You should have heard Alere lash out about this business; he called it
charity suppression.

Have you ever seen London in the early winter morning, when the frost
lies along the kerb, just melting as the fires are lit; cold, grey,
bitter, stony London?

Whatever _can_ morning seem like to the starved and chilly wretches who
have slept on the floor, and wake up to frost in Fleet Street?

The pavements are covered with expectoration, indicating the chest
diseases and misery that thousands are enduring. But I must not write
too plainly; it would offend.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXX.

A PRINTER in the office crawled under the bed of the machine to replace
something--a nut that had dropped; it was not known that he was there;
the crank came round and crushed him against the brickwork. The embrace
of iron is death.

Alere fed his helpless children, and apprenticed them when they were old
enough.

Ten pounds was enough for him--without ambition, and without
business-avarice; ten pounds was enough for his Fleet Street life.

It was not only the actual money he gave away, but the kindness of the
man. Have you ever noticed the boys who work in printing-offices?--their
elbows seem so sharp and pointed, bony, and without flesh. Instead of
the shirt-sleeve being turned up, it looks as if the pointed elbow had
thrust its way through.

He always had something for them;--a plate of beef, soup, beer to be
shared, apples, baked potatoes, now and then half-a-dozen mild cigars.
Awful this, was it not? Printers' boys _will_ smoke; they had better
have Flamma's fine tobacco than the vile imitation they buy.

They always had a tale for him; either their mothers, or sisters, or
some one was in trouble; Flamma was certain to do something, however
lit