l value, but to its recognised restaurant-value! Well, I happened
the other day to be at a meeting of old women at the `Beehive' in
Spitalfields; there were some eighty or a hundred of them. With dim
eyes and trembling fingers they were sewing garments for the boys who
are to be sent out to Canada. Such feeble workers could not find
employment elsewhere, but by liberal hearts a plan has been devised
whereby many an aged one, past work, can earn a few pence. Twopence an
hour is the pay. They are in the habit of meeting once a week for three
hours, and thus earn sixpence. Many of these women, I may remark, are
true Christians. I wondered how far such a sum would go, and how the
poor old things spent it. One woman sixty-three years of age
enlightened me. She was a feeble old creature, suffering from chronic
rheumatism and a dislocated hip. When I questioned her she said--`I
have difficulties indeed, but I tell my Father all. Sometimes, when I'm
very hungry and have nothing to eat, I tell Him, and I know He hears me,
for He takes the feeling away, and it only leaves me a little faint.'

"`But how do you spend the sixpence that you earn here?' I asked.

"`Well, sir,' she said, `sometimes, when very hard-up, I spend part of
it this way:--I buy a hap'orth o' tea, a hap'orth o' sugar, a hap'orth
o' drippin', a hap'orth o' wood and a penn'orth o' bread. Sometimes
when better off than usual I get a heap of coals at a time, perhaps
quarter of a hundredweight, because I save a farthing by getting the
whole quarter, an' that lasts me a long time, and wi' the farthing I
mayhap treat myself to a drop o' milk. Sometimes, too, I buy my
penn'orth o' wood from the coopers and chop it myself, for I can make it
go further that way.'

"So, you see, Welland," continued Brisbane, "your glass of sherry would
have gone a long way in the domestic calculations of a poor old woman,
who very likely once had sons who were as fond of her and as proud of
her, as you now are of your own mother."

"It is very sad that any class of human beings should be reduced to so
low an ebb," returned the young man seriously.

"Yes, and it is very difficult," said Sir Richard, "to reduce one's
mental action so as to fully understand the exact bearing of such minute
monetary arrangements, especially for one who is accustomed to regard
the subject of finance from a different standpoint."

"But the saddest thing of all to me, and the most difficult to