l language,
seeing the poor women with black eyes, watching the multitudinous
children in the mud, one wonders whether even these agencies are
enough to stem the tide and to prevent this mass of people from
falling lower and lower still into the hell of savagery. This parish
is one of the poorest in London; it is one of the least known; it is
one of the least visited. Explorers of slums seldom come here; it is
not fashionably miserable. Yet all these fine things are done here,
and as in this parish so in every other. It is continually stated as a
mere commonplace--one may see the thing advanced everywhere, in
'thoughtful' papers, in leading articles--that the Church of Rome
alone can produce its self-sacrificing martyrs, its lives of pure
devotion. Then what of these parish-workers of the Church of England?
What of that young physician who worked himself to death for the
children? What of the young men--not one here and there but in
dozens--who give up all that young men mostly love for the sake of
laborious nights among rough and rude lads? What of the gentlewomen
who pass long years--give up their youth, their beauty, and their
strength--among girls and women whose language is at first like a blow
to them? What of the clergy themselves, always, all day long, living
in the midst of the very poor--hardly paid, always giving out of their
poverty, forgotten in their obscurity, far from any chance of
promotion, too hard-worked to read or study, dropped out of all the
old scholarly circles? Nay, my brothers, we cannot allow to the Church
of Rome all the unselfish men and women. Father Damien is one of us as
well. I have met him--I know him by sight--he lives and has long
lived, in Riverside London.

ST. KATHERINE'S BY THE TOWER

On the 30th day of October, in the year of grace one thousand eight
hundred and twenty-five, there was gathered together a congregation to
assist at the mournfullest service ever heard in any church. The place
was the Precinct of St. Katherine's, the church was that known as St.
Katherine's by the Tower--the most ancient and venerable church in the
whole of East London--a city which now has but two ancient churches
left, those of Bow and of Stepney, without counting the old tower of
Hackney.

Suppose it was advertised that the last and the farewell service,
before the demolition of the Abbey, would be held at Westminster on a
certain day; that after the service the old church would b