All Sorts and Conditions of Men. Walter Besant

suppose. If these people knew what to do in order to make themselves happier, they would go and do that thing. Meantime, there is always love for everybody, and success, and presently the end—is not life everywhere monotonous?"

      "No," she replied stoutly; "mine is not."

      He was thinking at the moment that of all lives a dressmaker's must be one of the most monotonous. She remembered that she was a dressmaker, and explained:

      "There are the changes of fashion, you see."

      "Yes, but you are young," he replied, from his vantage-ground of twenty-three years, being two years her superior. "Mine is monotonous when I come to think of it. Only, you see, one does not think of it oftener than one can help. Besides, as far as I have got I like the monotony."

      "Do you like work?"

      "Not much, I own. Do you?"

      "No."

      "Yet you are going to settle down at Stepney."

      "And you, too?"

      "As for me, I don't know." The young man colored slightly. "I may go away again soon and find work elsewhere."

      "I was walking yesterday," she went on, "in the great, great church-yard of Stepney Church. Do you know it?"

      "Yes—that is, I have not been inside the walls. I am not fond of church-yards."

      "There they lie—acres of graves. Thousands upon thousands of dead people, and not one of the whole host remembered. All have lived, worked, hoped much, got a little, I suppose, and died. And the world none the better."

      "Nay, that you cannot tell."

      "Not one of all remembered," she repeated. "There is an epitaph in the church-yard which might do for every one:

      "'Here lies the body of Daniel Saul—

      Spitalfields weaver; and that is all.'

      That is all."

      "What more did the fellow deserve?" asked her companion. "No doubt he was a very good weaver. Why, he has got a great posthumous reputation. You have quoted him."

      He did not quite follow her line of thought. She was thinking in some vague way of the waste of material.

      "They had very little power of raising the world, to be sure. They were quite poor, ill-educated, and without resource."

      "It seems to me," replied her companion, "that nobody has any power of raising the world. Look at the preachers and the writers and the teachers. By their united efforts they contrive to shore up the world and keep it from falling lower. Every now and then down we go, flop—a foot or two of civilization lost. Then we lose a hundred years or so until we can get shoved up again."

      "Should not rich men try to shove up, as you call it?"

      "Some of them do try, I believe," he replied; "I don't know how they succeed."

      "Suppose, for instance, this young lady, this Miss Messenger, who owns all this property, were to use it for the benefit of the people, how would she begin, do you suppose?"

      "Most likely she would bestow a quantity of money to a hospital, which would pauperize the doctors, or she would give away quantities of blankets, bread, and beef in the winter, which would pauperize the people."

      Angela sighed.

      "That is not very encouraging."

      "What you could do by yourself, if you pleased, among the working-girls of the place, would be, I suppose, worth ten times what she could do with all her giving. I'm not much in the charity line myself, Miss Kennedy, but I should say, from three weeks' observation of the place and conversation with the respectable Bunker, that Miss Messenger's money is best kept out of the parish, which gets on very well without it."

      "Her money! Yes, I see. Yet she herself——" She paused.

      "We working men and women——"

      "You are not a working-man, Mr. Goslett." She faced him with her steady, honest eyes, as if she would read the truth in his. "Whatever else you are, you are not a working-man."

      He replied without the least change of color:

      "Indeed, I am the son of Sergeant Goslett, of the—th Regiment, who fell in the Indian Mutiny. I am the nephew of good old Benjamin Bunker, the virtuous and the disinterested. I was educated in rather a better way than most of my class, that is all."

      "Is it true that you have lived in America?"

      "Quite true." He did not say how long he had lived there.

      Angela, with her own guilty secret, was suspicious that perhaps this young man might also have his.

      "Men of your class," she said, "do not as a rule talk like you."

      "Matter of education—that is all."

      "And you are really a cabinet-maker?"

      "If you will look into my room and see my lathe, I will show you specimens of my work, O thou unbeliever! Did you think that I might have 'done something,' and so be fain to hide my head?"

      It was a cruel thing to suspect him in this way, yet the thought had crossed her mind that he might be a fugitive from the law and society, protected for some reason by Bunker.

      Harry returned to the subject of the place.

      "What we want here," he said, "as it seems to me, is a little more of the pleasure and graces of life. To begin with, we are not poor and in misery, but for the most part fairly well off. We have great works here—half a dozen breweries, though none so big as Messenger's; chemical works, sugar refineries, though these are a little depressed at present, I believe; here are all the docks; then we have silk-weavers, rope-makers, sail-makers, match-makers, cigar-makers; we build ships; we tackle jute, though what jute is, and what to do with it, I know not; we cut corks; we make soap, and we make fireworks; we build boats. When all our works are in full blast, we make quantities of money. See us on Sundays, we are not a bad-looking lot; healthy, well-dressed, and tolerably rosy. But we have no pleasures."

      "There must be some."

      "A theatre and a music-hall in Whitechapel Road. That has to serve for two millions of people. Now, if this young heiress wanted to do any good, she should build a Palace of Pleasure here."

      "A Palace of Pleasure!" she repeated. "It sounds well. Should it be a kind of a Crystal Palace?"

      "Well!" It was quite a new idea, but he replied as if he had been considering the subject for years. "Not quite—with modifications."

      "Let us talk over your Palace of Pleasure," she said, "at another time. It sounds well. What else should she do?"

      "That is such a gigantic thing that it seems enough for one person to attempt. However, we can find something else for her—why, take schools. There is not a public school for the whole two millions of East London. Not one place in which boys—to say nothing of girls, can be brought up in generous ideas. She must establish at least half a dozen public schools for boys and as many for girls."

      "That is a very good idea. Will you write and tell her so?"

      "Then there are libraries, reading-rooms, clubs, but all these would form part of the Palace of Pleasure."

      "Of course. I would rather call it a Palace of Delight. Pleasure seems to touch a lower note. We could have music-rooms for concerts as well."

      "And a school for music." The young man became animated as the scheme unfolded itself.

      "And a school for dancing."

      "Miss Kennedy," he said with enthusiasm, "you ought to have the spending of all this money! And—why, you would hardly believe it—but there is not in the whole of this parish of Stepney a single dance given in the year. Think of that! But perhaps——" He stopped again.

      "You