it in various ways. For one thing, I have given up smoking. That will
save a little; though, to say truth, I have never expended much on
baccy. Then I have joined Miss Robinson's Temperance Band--"

"Strange how often that lady's name has been in my ears since I came to
Portsmouth!" said Miles.

"Not so strange after all," returned Armstrong, "when one reflects that
she has been the means of almost changing the character of the town
within the last few years--as far at least as concerns the condition of
soldiers, as well as many of the poorer classes among its inhabitants--
so Sergeant Gilroy tells me."

As some of the information given by Sergeant Gilroy to the young soldier
may be interesting to many readers, we quote a few of his own words.

"Why, some years ago," he said, "the soldiers' wives, mothers, and
sisters who came down here to see the poor fellows set sail for foreign
parts, found it almost impossible to obtain lodgings, except in
drinking-houses which no respectable woman could enter. Some poor women
even preferred to spend a winter night under railway arches, or some
such shelter, rather than enter these places. And soldiers out of
barracks had nowhere else to go to for amusement, while sailors on leave
had to spend their nights in them or walk the streets. Now all that is
changed. The Soldiers' Institute supplies 140 beds, and furnishes board
and lodging to our sisters and wives at the lowest possible rates,
besides reception-rooms where we can meet our friends; a splendid
reading-room, where we find newspapers and magazines, and can write our
letters, if we like, in peace and quiet; a bar where tea and coffee,
bread and butter, buns, etcetera, can be had at all reasonable hours for
a mere trifle; a coffee and smoking room, opening out of which are two
billiard-rooms, and beyond these a garden, where we can get on the flat
roof of a house and watch the arrival and departure of shipping. There
is a small charge to billiard-players, which pays all expenses of the
tables, so that not a penny of the Institute funds is spent on the
games. Of course no gambling is allowed in any of Miss Robinson's
Institutes. Then there are Bible-class rooms, and women's work-rooms,
and a lending library, and bathrooms, and a great hall, big enough to
hold a thousand people, where there are held temperance meetings,
lectures with dissolving views, entertainments, and `tea-fights,' and
Sunday services. No wonder t