poorly-clad and under-fed children there abounding. The story of how the Society originated is told modestly enough. “Twenty-one years have elapsed since the superintendent of the Sunday School in one of the poorer districts of London had brought to his notice a case typical of hundreds of others daily occurring in all large cities—a father, suddenly removed by death, leaving a widow and seven children under eleven years of age to battle out an existence, with nothing whatever upon which they could regularly depend for support. The mother naturally objected to sacrifice her independence by entering the workhouse, and the result was as might be expected. From being the well-cared-for children of a respectable artizan, the little ones were, by the necessity for begging their daily bread, forced to swell the ranks of our waifs and strays, or street arabs, with an almost certain prospect of eventually drifting into the criminal class. As the little fellows had been brought up in the faith of the Church of England, the superintendent, as in duty bound, made every inquiry, in order to obtain admission for some of them into a Church Orphanage. Unless, however, he was prepared to pay a certain sum about £12 or £15 a year for each, which his means would not allow of his doing—there appeared to be no way of providing a home for them, where they would continue to receive the religious teaching to which they had
