reserved in over
thirty of the L.C.C. parks and open spaces for the use of schools. The
apparatus required is generally stored at the playing-fields for the
common use of all schools attending, but small articles such as balls,
bats, sticks are supplied to each school.

"The Council has decided that, so far as practicable, the apparatus for
organised games shall be made at the Council's educational institutes,
and, as a result of this decision, much of it is fashioned at the
handicraft centres."

This is all for good. But I am concerned for adolescent youth that
has left school--the lads whose home conditions absolutely prevent the
evening hours being spent indoors. Is there to be no provision for them?

CHAPTER XI. ON THE VERGE OF THE UNDERWORLD

Charles Dickens has somewhere said, "The ties that bind the rich to
their homes may be made on earth, but the ties that bind the poor to
their homes are made of truer metal and bear the stamp of Heaven." And
he adds that the wealthy may love their home because of the gold, silver
and costly things therein, or because of the family history. But that
when the poor love their homes, it is because their household gods
are gods of flesh and blood. Dickens's testimony is surely true, for
struggle, cares, sufferings and anxieties make their poor homes, even
though they be consecrated with pure affection, "serious and solemn
places."

To me it has always been evident that the heaviest part of the burden
inseparable from a poor man's home falls upon the wife.

Blessed is that home where the wife is equal to her duties, and doubly
blessed is the home where the husband, being a true helpmate, is anxious
to carry as much of the burden as possible. For then the home, even
though it be small and its floors brick, becomes in all truth "a sweetly
solemn place." It becomes a good training ground for men and women that
are to be. But I am afraid the working men do not sufficiently realise
what heavy, onerous and persistent duties fall upon the wife. With
nerves of brass they do not appreciate the fact that wives may be, and
are, very differently constituted to themselves. Many wives are lonely;
but the husbands do not always understand the gloomy imaginations that
pervade the lonely hours. The physical laws that govern women's personal
health make periods of depression and excitement not only possible, but
certain.

Let us consider for a moment the life of a poor man's wife in Londo