force. The crowd of disorderly fellows rushed in upon us, swarming, as it seemed, one on top of the other, and gathered at the farther end of the room, as uncouth a congregation as ever "assisted" at a religious service. There they betook themselves to jeering and cheering, to jocular conversation and rude remarks, cheerfully cracking nuts and crushing the shells under their feet with loud reports. I prayed for Queen and Royal Family, for Clergy and People, for "all conditions of men"; I offered "most humble and hearty thanks" to God for His goodness, particularly on behalf of "those who desire. now to offer up their praises and thanksgivings for Thy mercies vouchsafed unto them in permitting them to begin this work "; and without a break I finished up with the Grace. The hymn before the sermon was terrific. It was mixed up with music-hall songs, catcalls and whistling. But I went through the business to the bitter end; and sometimes I have thought that I never did anything requiring more resolution. By my sermon register I find that I took no text that evening, perhaps a pardonable omission under the circumstances; but by the same indisputable authority I also find that on this soul-stirring occasion I spoke on the respective duties of the clergy and the laity!

This was my first experience of rowdyism in Millwall; it was to be by no means my last. Many, many months were to elapse before the hostility, of which it was but a symptom, died a natural death; but into particulars of that harassing period I do not purpose entering here. Suffice it to say that for a very long time existence was pretty nearly insufferable. Epithets were flung at me broadcast. Hootings, howlings, roars of laughter followed me as I passed up and down the

West Ferry Road. The hard thing about it all was that I had to "smile and smile," and seem not to mind, although the "villain" in me was crying aloud for vengeance.

Not that my experience was by any means peculiar. Poor Postlethwaite on one occasion poured out his stricken soul to me in a burst of confidence. "I frightful un'appy," he said, in his broken English; " my life is but a burden to me, a 'eavy weight not to be borne. I must get away if I am to live." After patiently listening to my enthusiastic schemes for the improvement of the neighbourhood, he added, "Ah, yes, my God! it is very pretty. So I thought, per'aps, when I come 'ere. But all that is gone. It is 'opeless. We deal with an evil and adulterous generation. Be on your guard, or the East End will kill you as it has very nearly killed me.”

A melancholy prophecy indeed, but not without a show of reason. The anxieties of those early months, the hopeless struggle day by day, the consciousness of being strangers in a strange land, the toil on behalf of a people who treated our advances with suspicion or wanton hostility, wore the nervous system threadbare, until it seemed at times as if the sad prognostication of old Postlethwaite would come true.

An example of what I mean. For fifteen consecutive weeks I endeavoured, single-handed—for there was not a man in the place to help me-to form a lads' club. I did everything in my power to win the affection and confidence of those who proposed to join. I played cards with them; I sang songs to them; I made myself as far as possible one of them. I might have spared myself the pains. For fifteen consecutive weeks

my club was broken up by Jim Skewers, the leader of the gang; and during all that time I endured such indignities, notably at the hands of Bill Bluster, a foultongued, handsome young giant of eighteen, as I had not theretofore imagined possible. The modus operandi of Jim and his followers was characterised by beautiful simplicity. For half-an-hour or so after the club had opened, all would go well. Then a suspicious foregathering at one end of the room would suggest that mischief was afoot. Sometimes interruption would come in the form of an ominous shuffling of feet, at others in shouting, stamping, singing or insensate raving. The action would move forward to its climax with the fatality of a Greek tragedy. Voices would wax louder and louder, bangings and crashings more persistent. I would affect blindness, deafness; I would venture to remonstrate after the manner of the turtle-dove; I would try to take the fellows in their humour; I would appeal to them as men and gentlemen. All in vain! Shriller and shriller grew the yells, more and more deafening the stamping and thumping, until the furniture would leap and the floor rock, and the neat, compact gas-jets spasmodically stream upwards with shrill screeching. When the row had reached its climax, a maddened neighbour would not infrequently burst in on us with language and threats of police. Then, at last, at my word of command long and patiently withheld, my beautiful, beautiful club would withdraw, screaming and kicking like maniacs, and smashing into everything within reach; and I would lock the door, put the key in my pocket, go home, and collapse.

I sometimes ask myself, in these days of peace and comparative prosperity, how it was possible for me to go

C

on in the face of such discouragement; and the answer that comes to me is not so much that I had faith in God-that goes without saying-as that I had faith in man, which is a very different matter. In a word, I believed in the essential goodness even of the lads who of set purpose broke up my club every night; and in that faith I tried to prove myself their friend and the friend of their fathers and mothers. To say that I went out of my way to do this is to put the matter very mildly. It was my daily thought, my nightly dream. I walked warily, spoke softly, thought thrice before acting. Even then I was occasionally caught napping; for my zeal was apt to run away with me. Nor was the disciplinary check that providentially accompanies indiscretions backward in asserting itself. But I took short sights, tried not to meet trouble half-way, and broke myself in to endure by little and little.

It soon became evident that we were outgrowing the room in which our first services were held; and so an exodus was made to the Women's Settlement then in process of establishment Here the work was carried on under unusual difficulties. The largest room in the building, which happened to be on the first floor, was placed at our disposal; but no sooner had we settled there than the district surveyor swooped down on us, and ordered us to the ground floor. Can the sympathetic reader realise what this meant to pioneers who had worn themselves out with "humping" heavy furniture hither and thither, and had just succeeded in making their temporary chapel look decent?

But there was still more discipline in store for us. For a long time one side of the building was open to the weather, and all the available floorspace was strewn

with bricklayers' débris. On the stairs thick with dust. sat the blessed infants; all over the building, from ground-floor to attic, were poked the elder scholars. The difficulties of a Sunday School superintendent's work under such circumstances can be better imagined than described. I was the Sunday School superintend

And my poor congregation! What bad quarters of an hour I have had in anticipating the accidents that never came to them! But it was no less than miraculous that they escaped. Old and young alike were obliged to perform such acrobatic feats of skill and daring, in striding from beam to beam of the unplanked floor, as would haye taxed the nerves of the bravest. Once we had to go

out bodily into the open air. At another time we were glad enough to creep into the shelter of a disused stable, where every Sunday morning I engaged in a trial of vocal strength with the ostler on the other side of the partition, he doing his best to drown my voice, and I doing my best to drown his. Yet, in spite of all drawbacks, we survived; and from that time to this, our work, both spiritual and social, has gone on from day to day without a single break. Laus Deo!

In those days I was a pluralist of the most hopeless character. I occupied almost every official position known to the Church: sacristan, server, reader, district visitor, Sunday School superintendent, magazine editor, brigade captain, organist, choirmaster, secretary of lads' club, missioner, priest, and preacher. Nor did my duties end even there. Well do I remember pausing in the midst of my work in the church, and wondering what sundry fashionable friends would think of me and my wife; for she was scrubbing the floor of the sanctuary, and I was nailing down the carpet in the choir.