if you could find means to tell him your story,
he might become interested in you, as I have
been, and put you in the way of such a situation
as you seek."

''Perhaps," he said; "if I could meet the
gentleman, and he were not afraid to be seen
talking to such a ragamuffin. But dressed as I
am, I could not pass the lodge-gate. The dogs
and the servants would both be at me. To be
ragged, hungry, and wretched, is a much greater
offence in the eyes of servants, than it is in the
eyes of their masters. That's my experience.
Perhaps it is all right and natural that it should
be so. England is overrun with tramps, and I
know I look like one; and just now, though it
is not always so, I am behaving like one."

The doctrine of Fate and Destiny is not dead
in the world. It is by no means peculiar to
Buddhists and Mahomedans; and lurks in the
corners of many minds, where it ought not to
take up its lodging. It so happened, however,
whether it were a beneficent fatality for the poor
broken sergeant, or an accident, arising out
of the "fortuitous concurrence of atoms," that
at the very moment at which he uttered these
last words, I saw my friend, the East India
gentleman, who spoke Hindustani—Major
Bhurtampore, I shall call him—coming towards
us. The major, worthy man, has a hobby for
the Oriental tongues, and especially for
Hindustani, and when I, in few words, introduced
the sergeant to him, as one who could speak his
favourite language, the two were speedily
engaged in jabbering it together. The major
was delighted. He had not met for more than
five years with anybody who could speak
Hindustani; and I left him and the sergeant
together, and continued my walk alone.

It was a lucky day for the sergeant that he
asked me for a pint of beer; it was lucky for
him that I was not offended at his request; and
luckiest of all that we should have come across
Major Bhurtampore as we did. The major, who
is a convivial man himself, and likes his old
Madeira and Burgundy, was not too severe
upon the sergeant's failing; and liked the
sergeant all the better perhaps for not
concealing it. I learned from the major six months
afterwards, that he had given the sergeant a
trifle to help him on the road, and to pass the
week intervening before he could receive his
pension, and that he had exacted from him a solemn
promise that he would not taste spirits of any
kind, and that he would expend the money in
the purchase of a shirt and a decent suit of
clothes; and that in respectable trim he would,
the day afterwards, present himself at the
major's house. The sergeant was true to his
word; and the major was so pleased with his
punctuality, his improved appearance, and his
Hindustani, that he resolved to befriend him in
a more substantial manner, and to procure him,
if possible, either in England or in India, the
situation of hospital nurse, for which he deemed
himself best suited. After the lapse of two
months, during which the sergeant drank
nothing stronger than beer, which the major,
remembering his own love for Madeira, did not
prohibit, if taken in moderation, the major
was successful in procuring him a situation in
a military hospital in England. I have heard
of the sergeant very recently. He has quite
overcome his once uncontrollable love of rum
and gin; bears a high character in the hospital
for gentleness to his patients, and the careful
performance of his duty. Once every quarter,
when he gets a holiday to draw his pension, he
pays the major a visit. They talk Hindustani
together the whole day, and both of them, when
they separate, look forward with pleasure to
their next merry meeting. The sergeant
remains true to his beer. He says that beer
brought him luck, and as long as he can get
it good, and he can afford himself a pint
with his dinner and another half pint with his
supper, he shall take the exact allowance and
no more. Like Robert Burns, of whose poems,
he is a diligent student, and one or two of
which he has, with the major's assistance,
translated into Hindustani, he has learned, but
unlike Robert Burns, before it was too late,
"that prudent, cautious, self-control, is
wisdom's root." And it seems to me that as long
as he acts upon that excellent maxim, there is
no fear of him.

CANKER IN THE BUD.

THERE is a small pretty-looking cottage at
Leytonstone labelled on the outside, "Children's
Home and Laundry," where is now being
carried on one of the saddest works of Christian
charity that the world has yet seen—work so
sad, so painful, so revolting to the whole feeling
and nature of humanity, that I scarcely like
to speak of it at all. And yet it is but a false
modesty which refuses to recognise an existing
evil, when such recognition may probably do
good, and that would prefer to let a work of
positive reformation pass unnoticed rather than
undergo the horror of showing its necessity.
Wherefore, terrible as the whole subject is, I
will tell what I saw when I went down to
Leytonstone to look into the working of the
children's home—"the Home of the Good Shepherd,"
where the lambs of the human flock are
cared for—the place where tainted children are
rescued from a life of pollution—where cankered
buds are sought to be made into comely and
wholesome flowers. But first the Lady, as she
is called by the little ones, the kindly noble-
hearted woman who has begun and still carries
on this house, shall speak, in her circular letter
dated February, 1865.

"There is one very pitiable class for which I
now most earnestly entreat your help," she says.
"Poor little girls who have been led into habits
of impurity; often in entire ignorance of the
sin; sometimes through curiosity or self-will.
They are too young and too childish to be
received into Penitentiaries; too deeply tainted
with evil to be admitted into ordinary industrial
schools and orphanages. But are we to leave