ever been forgotten by the people, and, ill-famed as the
place was, I visited it at all times of the day and night with perfect
security. The apostle however of John's Place was my friend the
letter-sorter. He had fixed on it as his special domain, and with a
little aid from others had opened a Sunday-school and simple Sunday
services in the heart of it. A branch of the Women's Mission was
established in the same spot, and soon women were "putting by" their
pence and sewing quietly round the lady superintendent as she read to
them the stories of the Gospels.

It was this John's Place which Edward Denison chose as the centre of his
operations. There was very little in his manner to show his sense of
the sacrifice he was making, though the sacrifice was in reality a great
one. No one enjoyed more keenly the pleasures of life and society: he
was a good oarsman, he delighted in outdoor exercise, and skating was to
him "a pleasure only rivalled in my affection by a ride across country
on a good horse." But month after month these pleasures were quietly put
aside for his work in the East-end. "I have come to this," he says,
laughingly, "that a walk along Piccadilly is a most exhilarating and
delightful treat. I don't enjoy it above once in ten days, but therefore
with double zest." What told on him most was the physical depression
induced by the very look of these vast, monotonous masses of sheer
poverty. "My wits are getting blunted," he says, "by the monotony and
_ugliness_ of this place. I can almost imagine, difficult as it is, the
awful effect upon a human mind of never seeing anything but the meanest
and vilest of men and men's works, and of complete exclusion from the
sight of God and His works,--a position in which the villager never is."
But there was worse than physical degradation. "This summer there is not
so very much actual suffering for want of food, nor from sickness. What
is so bad is the habitual condition of this mass of humanity--its
uniform mean level, the absence of anything more civilizing than a
grinding organ to raise the ideas beyond the daily bread and beer, the
utter want of education, the complete indifference to religion, with the
fruits of all this--improvidence, dirt, and their secondaries, crime and
disease."

Terrible however as these evils were, he believed they could be met; and
the quiet good sense of his character was shown in the way in which he
met them. His own residence in the East-e