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amounting to five hundred a year, turned his mind to the realisation of a project on which both brain and heart, together with as strong a sense of duty as ever prompted human actions, had long caused him earnestly to dwell.

This was no other than to become a dweller amongst that thronging and "terrible" population, which in that dangerous suburb of Paris known as Belleville, has earned for itself so unenviable a reputation for lawlessness, brutality, and vice.

"I think that something might be done with them," Philip, feeling his way slowly, for he as yet knew little of his young wife's nature, said to her one morning as they sat together over a frugal Paris breakfast. He had taken her the day before in a Victoria through the thronged and narrow streets to the heights of Montmartre, to the summit of which Ivy, with a step already lightened of half its heaviness, had climbed, and from thence looked down upon the seething mass of ill-clothed, uncleanly, and generally speaking, not well - disposed-looking crowd below.

"How they looked at us!" she said, "as we passed them in the carriage! I do not think that I ever before saw countenances so evil.

There were some amongst them who really looked scarcely human."

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'Only too human, I fear," rejoined Philip sadly. "Are we not told that from the human heart proceed all evil thoughts, hatred, covetousness, murders,' and such like? and when we see every day of our lives how strongly rooted in our nature is the passion of envy, and how deplorable are often the consequences which even in our own sphere, and when there is comparatively little cause for its indulgence, it can produce, can we find no extenuating plea for men born in the atmosphere of crime, and who throughout their lives have herded together in the degrading fellowship which a correlation in the 'evil things that come from within, and defile the man,' necessitate, amongst the ignorant and neglected poor of a vast and luxurious and, alas, wicked city? It is but too natural, too comprehensible, that when from out the noisome alleys and filthy dens in which so terrible a proportion of these unhappy Bellevillites live out their darkened, hopeless lives, they look with bitter envy on those favoured ones of the earth, who are 'clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day,' their hearts should be turned hard as the nether millstone towards the rich."

"But, Philip, surely they have their priests and people to teach and to look after them. Of course, as we all know, the poor have a dreadful number of temptations to fight against; but why, I wonder, should they be so much worse at Belleville than anywhere else? In other cities one never hears of the lower orders committing such atrocities as these people did after the war. Think of their women-those horrible pétroleuses!"

"Horrible indeed; but deeply, truly pitiable, especially when we remember that it is to such unsexed and degraded women as these that children, doomed from their birth to pursue a like course of sin and shame, will owe their miserable existence. You ask me, dear, why such excesses as the inhabitants of this suburb have been guilty of should be of a deeper dye than those which we read of as having been from time to time committed by the excited thousands of other cities, who, in common with the closely-packed denizens of Belleville, have to endure as best they may the thousand ills to which their lots in life expose them? Well, reasons doubtless might probably be found sufficiently plausible to, in some measure, account for this; and the search into causes for such effects could hardly fail, I think,

to be in some degree useful. But, dearest, does it not strike you that whilst it may be the vocation of some to examine into the primum mobile of such results, to dig into nucleuses, and compose statistics therefrom, it is for others, for those especially who feel within themselves not only the will but the gift—a greater power than their own aiding and inspiring them in the work to toil amongst these neglected pariahs, who, because they have in a mass followed their natural instincts to do evil, are passed, by many a well-meaning so-called Christian, with looks of scorn and hatred on 'the other side?'"

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With eager eyes, her whole intelligent soul shining through their blue depths, Ivy has listened to her husband's words. As he had expected, they had touched a responsive chord within her breast, and at a glance he saw that his meaning was caught, his hopes and aspirations responded to.

"Oh, Philip!" she exclaimed, her hands clasped, and her fair face flushed with excitement, "you will do this! you really will! But, ah!" her countenance falling and her enthusiasm checked as a sudden a sudden thought occurs to her, "how can you, being a Protestant, preach to those Roman Catholics? Surely they will not

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listen to you? The French," she in her ignorance added, "are so bigoted to their faith, so in the power of their clergy."

"Not in Belleville, darling. It would be better if they were."

"Oh, Philip !"

"Yes, 'oh, Philip' as often as you please,” he, with a quiet smile, rejoins. "I am no slave to creeds, and whatever form of God serving it may be that tends to make a man a better Christian, that creed I from the bottom of my heart respect:

"For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight,

He can't be wrong whose life is in the right :'

a mighty truth, dear Ivy, and uttered by one who, if far as the poles from being what is called a religious writer, has bequeathed to us some of the grandest lines on the subject of spiritual existence that ever human pen has framed. But to return to these head-quarters, as they are termed, of the still dangerous (severe has been their recent lesson) Communists. What is called 'preaching' to them would, in their present state, be in my opinion (even were the man addressing them to be possessed of every persuasive quality) a labour worse than thrown away. To men who are asking for bread, it is simply a 'stone,' and nothing more acceptable, which

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