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There was gas for as an extra.

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many of the rooms; but that was paid 'Are these workmen, living here, of what

would call the better class?' I asked.

"I rather think not, sir,' was the answer.

'Most o'

them does common sort o' work; 'n sometimes they hasn't any in the dull season: but they manages to stick by the square, in any case. Me'n my man does all the hirin' rooms; and we never has any disputes. All pays, allers.'

"Which rather proves that the workmen find it cheap and advantageous to live there; because collecting rents elsewhere, in the dens which are made to serve the poor as houses, is sometimes even dangerous. But you have only to put a man in a den to make him a beast.

"So, in this square, here are one hundred and sixtyeight families, averaging six members each, renting comfortable rooms, in a clean, airy, and respectable quarter of the city, for about five dollars per month, per tenement. Their condition is much improved by the arrangements made for them; and any drunkenness or fighting in the building is never known. I saw, in many of the rooms, the men at home, evidently enjoying the society of their families, instead of swilling beer at the public-house. I should give my testimony in favor of the success of Mr. Peabody's money as a most practical beneficence."

"The London Illustrated News" thus refers to the benefaction of Mr Peabody:

"On March 12, 1862, Mr. Peabody addressed a letter

to Mr. C. F. Adams, American minister, the Right Hon. Lord Stanley, Sir J. E. Tennet, Mr. (now Sir) Curtis M. Lampson, Bart., and Mr. J. S. Morgan, his own partner in business, informing them that a sum of £150,000 stood in the books of Messrs. George Peabody and Co., to be applied by them for the amelioration of the. condition of the poor of London.

"The gentlemen above named duly entered on their trust, which has been applied in the mode indicated by the donor; namely, in the erection of model dwellings for working-men. In January, 1866, Mr. Peabody added another £100,000 to the fund; and, on Dec. 5 last, he made a further donation of about fifteen acres of land at Brixton, 5,642 shares in the Hudson's Bay Company, and £5,405 in cash, making a total of £100,000; thus raising the amount of his gift to London to £350,000. This gift is held by the trustees under two deeds, the first having reference to the £150,000 first given, and the second including the remaining £200,000; which latter was not to be put in operation until July, 1869, and has, therefore, but now begun to be dealt with. It appears, by the statement of the trustees for the year 1868, that they now hold property under the first deed valued at £173,313; the increase being the produce of rents on the buildings, added to the interest on unexpended capital. Four ranges of buildings have been already erected, which house a population of 1,971 individuals, composed of the families of working-men earning wages, on the average,

under twenty-one shillings a week. The trustees have acquired other sites, on which they are about to complete further blocks of houses for similar purposes.

"By the last will and testament of Mr. Peabody, opened on the day of his funeral, his executors, Sir Curtis Lampson, and Mr. Charles Reed, M.P., are directed to apply a further sum of £150,000 to the Peabody Fund in London. This makes half a million sterling bestowed by Mr. Peabody for that single object."

CHAPTER IX.

APPRECIATION.

Visit to his Native Land. - The Freedom of the City of London.-The The Queen's Portrait. The Peabody Statue.

Queen's Letter.

"Praise is but virtue's shadow."

HEATH'S Clarastella.

"Honor to whom honor."- Roм. xiii. 7.

HE munificence of the man who remembered the poor of London was appreciated by the people of England. The merchants and capitalists of London showed their appreciation of the noble deed by causing a costly statue of Mr. Peabody to be placed in one of the squares of that city; and, shortly before he left England for a visit to his native land, he received other tokens of appreciation from the people of his adopted home, and from the sovereign lady of the realm. But his characteristic modesty made it difficult for a grateful and admiring people to express their appreciation in a tangible form. The same feelings that led Mr. Peabody to decline the public acknowledgments of the cities of his native land in 1857 prevented him

from accepting the honors which Englishmen were ready to shower upon him. The freedom of the city was bestowed upon him by the corporation of London, and acknowledgments from many other public bodies were freely offered. Arrangements were also entered into for the erection of his statue. The only occasion on which he appeared in public was at the close of the WorkingClasses' Exhibition in the Guildhall in 1866, when he received an enthusiastic welcome which even royalty itself might envy.

A short time before his sailing for America in 1866, a proposal was made to confer on Mr. Peabody either a baronetcy or the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath; but he declined them both. When asked what gift, if any, he would accept, he replied, "A letter from the Queen of England, which I may carry across the Atlantic, and deposit as a memorial of one of her most faithful sons." To this modest request a ready response was given by the following letter:

"WINDSOR CASTLE, March 28, 1866. "The Queen hears that Mr. Peabody intends shortly to return to America; and she would be sorry that he should leave England without being assured by herself how deeply she appreciates the noble act, of more than princely munificence, by which he has sought to relieve the wants of her poorer subjects residing in London. It is an act, as the Queen believes, wholly without parallel; and which will carry its best reward in the consciousness of having

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