surprised you at the innumerable pieces into which he could divide a chicken!

After a long tour in the Bernese Oberland I remember dining one night at the old Hôtel Métropole in Geneva. We had the usual ten courses, and came away under the impression we had had a great deal to eat; but it was only an impression. After an hour or two we were assailed by what we may call the 'table d'hôte hunger,' and were glad to go into a restaurant and regale ourselves with sardines and cold roast beef and pickles.

And now we will take the simple fare to be found in the ' restaurant' of Rowton House, King's Cross. We will sit down at one of the little oak tables. Above it there is a picture, in colours, of two monks eating macaroni.

Bread and a basin of soup will cost twopence (the soup is excellent, and you get enough bread to make a meal of itself); a plate of roast beef and potatoes, fivepence; ' roly-poly pudding' (like Sancho Panza, not to be greeted unbenignly '), one penny. And you may go and walk in 'Merry Islington' without fear of the table d'hôte hunger.

I have mentioned in the first sentence of this article that I have lived upon a sum of less than ten shillings a week. My actual expenditure for food and lodgings has, for months at a time, not exceeded eight shillings and twopence a week.

Upon this sum I can live well, and it may interest you to know how I do it.

There is no royal road. You must face the music' and cook for yourself.

My first venture in cooking was the purchase of half a pound of beef sausages, potatoes, and a few tomatoes; but when I contemplated the great blazing fires, I thought seriously of giving some one a small sum to cook them for me. However, with the aid of a gentleman who earned his living by translating articles for French newspapers, I succeeded. He gave me a lesson in mashing potatoes, and taught me how, when the sausages were nearly ready, to place the sliced tomatoes in the frying-pan, making a not unsavoury dish, which cost fourpence.

Here is my last night's dinner. I purchased in a shop beside the Meat Market in Smithfield half a pound of beef-cuttings (fresh, sound beef), which cost twopence; quarter of a peck of fresh green peas, a penny; and a pound of new potatoes, a halfpenny. I placed the meat in cold water at the side of the fire until it simmered; later I added the peas and potatoes. It made an excellent stew. A cup of black coffee, one halfpenny. The total cost was fourpence. Breakfast-tea, brown bread, butter, and bacon, fourpence. Eightpence for food, sixpence for lodging-one shilling and twopence per day; eight shillings and twopence per week.

I can cook fish with very little trouble. A large mackerel costs

fourpence. I place it between two tin plates in the oven, and in fifteen minutes it will be cooked to perfection.

6

I remember talking to the manager of what at the time was, perhaps, the best restaurant in Paris, and he said to me that if he could place at the head of his dinner-bill, A good appetite five francs,' it would be a source of profit to himself, and greatly lessen the difficulty he had in pleasing his customers.

If you go without lunch, and live upon the simple fare I have described above, you will have an appetite that you could sell at Voisin's, in the Rue St. Honoré, for a little pile of francs-sometimes, alas! for a heap of napoleons.

Every morning, when I come down to breakfast, there is waiting for me on a table by an open window a cup, saucer, and tea-pot-all carefully washed: an act of kindness that is done by one whom I may call the grey man.'

He goes to bed every night at seven-thirty and rises soon after four. He started in life as a clerk, and on account of his industry— unfortunately for himself—was made a partner. Eventually the firm failed. In appearance he might be a deacon in the great Congregational church to which he goes twice every Sunday. Reticent to a degree, he has made few friends in life. He goes into the City every day, and of his occupation I am uncertain; of the results I am certain. The little meals tell the tale-tea, brown bread and butter, and not much of that at times; and, if things are better, perhaps a chop.

When you have been accustomed to live among people in health, it is difficult when you first come into touch with those who are suffering from disease.

For many months there breakfasted with me at this table a bricklayer. He had been careful and saved money. In an article in this Review,' published in December 1893, the writer speaks of London as the 'happy hunting-ground for the tubercle bacillus.' My friend the bricklayer was suffering from consumption. Day by day the sorrowful tale was told, until at last the meals were left unfinished. One evening I saw him playing draughts. The next morning he told me that many had been asking him if he felt better, and he added, 'I don't know how to answer them!' Not many days afterwards, in a bed in the Royal Free Hospital at King's Cross, the question had for ever ceased to require an answer.

If you will go to an archway near St. Paul's Cathedral, any day about eleven, you may see pass into the office of a publishing firm a man of about sixty years of age. He belongs to a class becoming extinct; he is a colporteur, earns his bread by selling books. He has an intelligent face-features like the portraits of Dante. He comes sometimes and takes his evening meal with me. He is a poor

''What London People die of,' by Hugh Percy Dunn.

man. I fear the book trade is not what it once was, and, like Enoch Arden, he has to hoard all savings to the uttermost.' finds he can live more cheaply in one of Lord Rowton's houses than anywhere else, and it is more cheerful than the solitude of a private room. His conversation is interesting, especially when he talks about old London. He never gives any heed to what I say. But he is a kindly, well-meaning man; will give me a little of his fruit, or lend me his evening paper; says he enjoys my society very much. Speech is silvern, silence is golden.'

I was sitting one day in the library when a man of some twentyseven years of age asked me to let him have the use of my pen and ink. When he had finished writing we fell into conversation. He told me he had just come out of gaol. This was his story: One day, when he was out walking, a cart passed containing half-filled bags. He knew the men in the cart, and they offered him a lift. They had not proceeded far when the cart was stopped by detectives. The bags contained stolen goods, and he was locked up. He was remanded four times, and eventually sentenced to a year's imprisonment. He told me he had no part in the theft, and would not have shared in the money realised by the stolen goods. I believed him-a belief that unfortunately is of little value, as I have only heard one side of the case.

There was a man who lived here at one time whom the people called the 'Silver King '—tall, clean-shaved, with a fine head of grey hair. Almost the first night he was in the house a stranger offered to teach him a new game on the draught-board. They sat down together and played the stranger was Lord Rowton. The Silver King's' tale was a sad one, poverty having fallen upon him in his old age. One day he disappeared, going away into this great city of London as Rip Van Winkle went away into the Catskill Mountains.

In a house like this you meet with many strange people. We hear a great deal nowadays about literature as a profession. Walter Pater in his essay on Style says: 'Say what you have to say, what you have a will to say, in the simplest and most direct and exact manner possible.' We may add to this the importance of having something to say. How many novels we have read fail! The authors have nothing to say. Here is a school for the study of character at your doorLord Rowton will charge no entrance-fee-the admission is sixpence. If you stay for a time at one of these 'wayside inns,' you may gather an array of character that would have delighted Dumas, Dickens, or Sir Walter Scott to portray. In your hands they may be only marionettes, or it may be that you will be able to make them speak. In any case, you will have the straw-and it is difficult to make bricks without straw.

The trouble of sleeping in a wooden cubicle is that the wood easily conveys sound. There is the man with the cough, and the man who snores. I have observed that men who snore never suffer

from insomnia, but they succeed in making you heartily wish that they did.

Dr. George R. Wilson, speaking in Edinburgh last autumn before the Medico-Psychological Association, said: 'Inasmuch as many careless vicious drunkards cannot be made to smart in their conscience, I believe that the infliction of corporal punishment would be useful against repeated lapses from sobriety.' This statement has resulted in varied expressions of opinion, many differing. For those who differ, I would have them sleep for a few nights in a cubicle in this house with one who has lapsed from sobriety in the next division. After a few nights without sleep he will have changed his opinion, perhaps a dozen working men being also prevented from sleeping-men who, even in June, have to be up at sunrise. These lapsers from sobriety belong to the class who come home at midnight to put terror into the hearts of helpless children who should know no terror. I am not sure but Victor Hugo's prescription might be best for them to be called at dawn: five minutes afterwards a puff of smoke, and the business so far as they are concerned for ever finished. The manager here has a simple cure-he returns them their money, and they are not permitted to enter the building again.

I am sorry to say that my fellow-lodgers in Rowton House do not believe in fresh air. They have a prejudice against night air. They believe that the air which floods London on a summer morning, and the air that beats on St. Paul's on Christmas Eve, are poisons which they must avoid. If you will let them have their way -fortunately the officials do not-they will sit on a winter night, in their reading-rooms, with three great fires ablaze, and every circular window that admits fresh air closed. They have an altogether exaggerated idea of the effect of draughts.

One day I hope there may be erected in London a building into which people may go and be trained so that they will become accustomed to draughts. It will be divided into rooms, like a Turkish bath. In the first room there will be a gentle, zephyr-like breeze falling upon you; the breeze will increase in strength in each chamber, until you reach the last, when there will be a perfect storm, such as you would encounter on the North Foreland. After a 'course' of this the patient will have ceased to be susceptible to cold from draughts. We have Hospital Sunday. There might be another Sunday, upon which every clergyman in London preached upon the importance of breathing pure air, and so do something towards lessening the numbers who have need to use the hospital.

Here is something that Lord Rowton has done for young men. Mr. John Bright, in speaking in favour of the delivery of letters in London on Sunday mornings, mentioned as an argument in its favour the advantage to be gained by a young man receiving a letter The Mismanagement of Drunkards (Adlard & Son).

of counsel from his father. Lord Rowton has done even better for him-has provided a home where he can pass his time in a rational manner, where he may read books, write letters, and above all mix with what he pathetically calls his mates;' provided for him, in a humble way, comforts that are enjoyed by those who frequent the great club houses in Piccadilly and Pall Mall.

To appreciate what this means, you must picture the shabby lodging-house bedroom, the long evenings with no one to speak to, the empty box at the window in which flowers never grow.

The building of these large houses for working men has proved a success, and introduced a new feature into the social life of London. As yet the scheme is only in its infancy. Houses of this class will be built in all the great industrial cities throughout the kingdom. They will not be limited to men only; they will be erected for unmarried women, and for married men with families.

I shall not have written this article in vain, if it could be the means of inducing Lord Rowton and Sir Richard Farrant to erect a house similar to this at Brighton, perhaps with a thousand beds, to give accommodation to the hard-worked City clerk, where he could go -let us hope, upon his bicycle-from Saturday to Monday, and breathe sea air, paying only sixpence a night for his bed, and purchase his food at the prices I have named. A charity, not founded upon the shifting sands of sentiment, but built upon the solid rock of a 5 per cent. dividend.

It may naturally be said to me, 'With so small an expenditure, what have you in London that will yield you relaxation-add brightness to your life? What is there left that is "worth your heed"?' The answer may not be without interest. There is the pleasure I derive from writing; you may practise music, sculpture, painting, carve in wood, follow any art. Art is the poor man's inheritance. Robert Louis Stevenson, writing from Hyères in the French Riviera 3 in April 1883, says: An art is a fine fortune, a palace in a park, a band of music, health and physical beauty: all but loveto any worthy practiser. I sleep upon my art for a pillow, I waken in my art; I am unready for death because I hate to leave it.'

There is an interesting passage in one of Dr. Boyd of St. Andrews' ('A. K. H. B.') essays in which, speaking of his life in the Manse, he tells how, when there would be an article of his published in Fraser's Magazine, the magazine would rest in the cover unopened until the day's work was done.

When I shall have finished writing to-day I shall go to one of the great stations; on the bookstall there will be a pile of magazines, one of them containing an article written by myself. You need not imagine for a moment that I shall purchase a copy; I know a better use for a sixpence than that. But it may To Mr. Henley, Robert Louis Stevenson's Letters,' Scribner's Magazine, April 1899.