and not of climate.  But for them, one might doubt whether the hope General Booth conceives for the “submerged tenth” would be hope at all in their eyes.  Nothing so difficult as to persuade the Londoner to go into the country, and the emigrant to keep to work away from the congenial interludes of town pleasure.  But once create this hope (and persistent reiteration can do much when the agent is a kindly man or woman) and you have introduced a new element into the life of the wastrel.  Our prison system, growing in harshness, failed utterly to deter; with the reformatory system, based on the principle of making it to a man’s interest to behave well within the walls, a new era dawned on criminal legislation.  It is for these reasons that I look with deep interest on General Booth’s experiment.  Do not let us say, “The experiment has been tried before; it is useless to attempt it again.”  I believe there is enough of novelty in General Booth’s scheme to justify a hope of success.  But for past failures I can but say that people do not regard failure as a ground for inaction when their interest is deeply involved.  When I was a boy, some 45 years ago, I saw at the old Polytechnic experiments in electricity:  the electric light, the electric cautery, &c.  For years I expected to see them introduced into the work-day world.  Now, at last, they are coming into use, but I do not think the shares stand at a very high premium.  None the less electricity will one day be of universal use.  That is what experiment in spite of failure has done; that is what we ought to do in social matters.  When all is done, the result will be comparatively small when compared with our aspirations, but it will create, as all good work does, new outlets for effort, new objects for hope.

BROOKE LAMBERT.

The Vicarage, Greenwich, Nov. 19.

Dr. Parker approves the General’s Scheme.

A report in the Star says:—­“Dr. Parker, preaching his one-minute sermon at the City Temple yesterday (Sunday) morning, said, ’I hope General Booth will get every penny he asked for.  No man can make better use of money.  I wish be would include other Englands in his scheme.  There is another England, darker than the darkest he has in view.  I mean the England of genteel poverty and genteel misery....  These people are not in the slums, but they are fast being driven in that direction....  From my point of view, one of the best features in General Booth’s scheme is that nobody is to receive anything for nothing.  It is easy to throw money away.  Money we work for goes farthest.  There is

NO STAIN OF PAUPERISM

upon it.