some society. Every person is required to pay
twopence, the remainder of the cost of the
dinner being defrayed out of subscriptions and
donations. Particular attention is requested
to the following advantages peculiar to this
charity:

1. That the full amount of the Subscriptions is
spent in Food, without any deduction whatever for
Rent or Management.

2. Every person relieved is known to be deserving,
by the personal visitation of those who make it their
kind office to visit the poor at their own homes.

3. The Donations are likewise spent in Food, with
this difference, that they are used to supply Book
of Dinner Tickets to Hospitals, Dispensaries, and
Charitable Institutions, which have no fund applicable
for such purposes.

4. That as soon as a larger attendance is secured,
all the working expenses, including Rent and
Management, will be defrayed by the poor themselves,
thus carrying out the original intention of this
Charity, "to help the poor to help themselves."

It will, however, be obvious from the above that
large numbers can alone enable this to be done; and
as the expenses are very nearly the same to dine
fifty persons daily as to dine the present number
(about thirty), it is to be hoped the former number
will soon be reached.

The book of tickets is one guinea for forty
dinners (adult), the odd shilling representing
the expenses of printing, &c., while the whole
of the remaining twenty shillings goes in food.
A book of ten dinner-tickets for children is
three and sixpence.

The Sick Children's Dinner, though well
worth visiting, is better worth upholding
and copying in districts where needed. In
both sections of the charity—-for we have
spoken of both almost as one, the daily dinner-
table of the adults, and the bi-weekly dinner-
table of the children it is eminently practical,
humane, and useful. There is no pauperising
quality about it, no doubtful nor mischievous
element whatever. That puny children should
be made, if possible, into hale and wholesome
men and women, and that the hungry
should be fed when they are unable to feed
themselves are canons of a law as eternal as
humanity itself. Mr. Hicks does no more than
this; but he does this, and thoroughly; his
success lying as much in the spirit as in the means,
and more in his manner of action than in his
material. It is by love, by personal care, by
personal visiting, by personal knowledge, by
unwearied exertions, by thorough-going devotion
to the thing he has undertaken, that he has
made his charity so entirely satisfactory; and
we must add, also, by recognising a higher
motive than even that of charity, great as this
is by working among and for the poor in
the spirit of Him who said, "He who giveth
unto the least of these, giveth unto me," and
one of whose last commandments to his Apostle
was, "Feed my lambs." Zeal, common sense,
and a noble aim, will make most things
succeed. What a great thing it would be if
many of our readers thought the same, and
went to Woburn-buildings for lessons how to
employ their leisure, and on what to expend
their energies!

        BET'S MATCH-MAKING.

THE only time I ever tried match-making in
my life was when I was seventeen, and I then
so burnt my fingers over the business that I
took care never to meddle with it again. I
was living at the time with my stepmother on
her farm near Ballymena. My father was dead,
and my stepmother did not like me. She had
placed me for a time with a milliner in the town,
but finding it expensive supporting me apart
from her, had taken me away again. She was
thinking of a second marriage, though I did
not know it at the time. But this I did
know:—-that she had written to some distant
friends of my father in America, who had
unwillingly consented to take me off her hands.

I don't think it would have been half as hard
for me to have made up my mind to die; for
I was a shy little thing, without a bit of courage
to deal with strangers, and my heart was fit
to burst at the thought of leaving the very few
friends whom I had to love, and my own little
corner of the world, where the trees and the
roads knew me. But I felt it would have to be
done, and I lay awake all night after the letter
arrived, trying to think how I should ever be
brave enough to say good-bye to my dear friend
Gracie Byrne, and to Gracie's lover, Donnell
McDonnell.

Gracie was the cleverest of all Miss Doran's
apprentices. She was an orphan without a
friend to look after her, and she was the
loveliest girl in the country. People said she was
proud and vain; but I never could think she
was either. She and I loved one another dearly,
though I cannot think what attracted her to
poor little plain me. She had plenty of
admirers, and she queened it finely amongst them;
but the only one to whom I would have given
her with all my heart was Donnell McDonnell.
And, oh dear! he was the very one whom
she would not look at.

Donnell and I were great friends, and I had
promised to do all I could to help him with
Gracie. He was young and strong, and as
bonny a man as could be seen. He had a fine
farm, all his own, some three miles across
country from my stepmother's place. If Gracie
would but marry him, she should live like a
lady and drive into Ballymena on her ovn
jaunting-car. But she was always saying that
she would go away to London, and be a great
"West-end" milliner. This terrified me badly,
seeing that London is such a wicked place.

My stepmother was always crying out that
Gracie would come to a sorrowful end, which
made me wild ; and as I lay awake that wretched
night I thought a great deal about what might
happen to her if she went away to London by
herself, and she so handsome, and not having a
friend at all. And I wished with all my strength