The Elder Lizzie must be mad!

any

She went to a furnished room in the next street and hid herself there. The family of the Elder Lizzie did not suffer serious privation after all. Perhaps she had known they would be all right. Topsy's mother took in the little boys and the new baby, and Lizzie went to the free shelter for a night or two till things came straight again. Billy found a shake-down for himself with a pal, and Teddie persuaded Johnny to befriend him.

Only the Starver sat alone among the shadows in his empty home, and wondered what the devil was the matter.

Presently he, too, went out to find his mates in the Blue Star.

The birthday came, and Lizzie got her summons out, but it did not surprise the Starver.

Nobody could find the Starver; he had disappeared; the bare rooms in the top of the Gutter-castle were as empty as when the Elder Lizzie had left them. Everybody wanted to know what the devil had become of the Starver. But only the devil knew.

At last some one volunteered to tell Lizzie of the Starver's disappearance. Lizzie was disappointed. After all, her little birthday surprise had been a failure. But she would find him; she would hunt him to the end of the earth; she would drag the canals, and dive into the deep places of Gutter-garten for the missing body of the Starver.

But she knew where he was. He had got pinched on Saturday night in his cups, and this time there had been no Elder Lizzie to bail him out. But upon investigation Lizzie's theory collapsed. The Starver was not in the lock-up.

The Elder Lizzie went on going to the laundry and paying for her furnished room, while other people minded the

lived breathlessly under the shadow of this tremendous mystery. But at last the end came.

It was the Saturday after the disappearance of the Starver. He had been away a week, when Johnny bounced in in a state of wild excitement.

'I've seed 'im!' he screamed. 'I'll take me dyin' oath on it!'

The Starver had come home at last. He carried a bag of tools with him, and he was up there in the Gutter-castle, collecting his scattered family. Lizzie stood out in Gutter-garten and watched the gathering of the home circle. Could the Starver really have found work? Of course she had never meant to take the matter to court. It was only her little birthday surprise for him. Would he ask her to come back? She wondered! She knew what a lot of washing there must be by this time. Why, his poor socks must be fair walked through if he had been on tramp. Presently the window flew up, and the Starver looked out. He seemed to look very peeky, she thought, but there! work had never agreed with him.

'Liz,' he said, 'ain't yer comin' up?' He must be clean daft to think she would go back to him like that. If he went down on his hands and knees he could n't expect more.

"Tom,' she said, 'I never meant to take that to court, but you've seen the last of me. Mind you're good to the kids, Tom, when I'm gone, and don't forget to give Nannie 'er cough mixture. Maybe you'll find me in the canal, but there's plenty of chaps 'ud be glad to 'ave me work for 'em as I've worked for you, and the children knows as 'ow I 'ave.'

The Starver's face, as it hung out of the window, became troubled. 'Ain't yer comin' up, Liz?' he persisted gently.

'Me comin' up, Tom? Not me. I

can't do it no more, Tom. I'm fair broke, I am, Tom. If yer went down on yer bended knees yer could n't ask no more!'

For the whole afternoon it seemed as if this dialogue would continue. But I was not anxious about Lizzie. I knew that curiosity and wounded pride would certainly carry the day, and land her safely once again in the bosom of her abandoned family.

That the Starver should have found work after all these years was an unfathomable mystery; that the Starver should have become independent was the sting of cruelty.

'Ain't yer comin' up, Liz?' went on the gruff voice, kindly.

'Wots 'ome without a mother?' suggested Johnny at her elbow.

'Yer don't want yer wife now yer can keep yerself, I s'pose? 'Ow did yer find work?'

'I ain't found no work, Liz! Oo says I got any work?'

'Why, wot you got in yer bloody bag, then? Ain't they tools in there?'

"They ain't no tools, Liz. I've been down in the country, along of my mother, wot I ain't seen this ten year. Tramped it all the way, I did, and I brought back a few apples for the kids. Ain't yer comin' up, Liz?'

The Elder Lizzie mounted the stairs of the Gutter-castle with a bursting heart and brimming eyes.

'I've got me week's money for the dinner to-morrer, Tom,' she said.

And then began the laborious collection of the new home of the Lizzies.

IV

I

HAVING made up my mind to leave South Africa, it did n't take me long to get under way. The situation at the time, political and otherwise, was not very promising. With outspoken sympathy for Boers and Kaffirs, my pro⚫spects were anything but bright. In most of the towns, British sentiment was very aggressive, and personal encounters between Uitlanders and Africanders were of daily occurrence. As a matter-of-fact, there was nearly as much danger in leaving the country as there was in remaining and facing the music. But having made up my mind, I selected the easiest route and that was by way of the Diamond Fields. On a former visit to these fields I had got a glimpse of their interesting activities, and I was anxious to widen the experience. So I made my plans to travel from Pretoria to Kimberley, and thence to the Cape.

Just before leaving Pretoria, however, I met a prospector by the name of James. He was one of those enthusiastic individuals who never take no for an answer, or defeat for an end. He had been one of the first on the ground at the Pilgrims Rest Gold Fields, and when speculation grew tame in that quarter, he turned his attention to Rustenburg and to the district now known as the Rand.

When I met James in Pretoria the future of the Rand, with commerce and railroads and Johannesburg and billions of gold in the mountains, was already clearly mapped out in his prophetic yet practical imagination. In fact, he had the samples of quartz in his saddle-bags at the time, and he was quietly trying to raise the funds wherewith to purchase a few farms in the district, upon which his faith in the Transvaal and his hopes for his own future were pinned. His enthusiasm was contagious. His was the inspiration. derived from a certainty. I was sorely tempted to embark, in a small way, in his venture. Indeed, I actually put off my departure for a day or two, hesitating.

But James could n't wait for me or anybody else. The gold fever was already in the air, the price of farms in the promising districts was on the jump, and altogether the situation was vastly different from the days at the end of the Burgers' administration, when a farm of six thousand acres was actually exchanged for two bottles of Hennessey's 'three star' brandy.

But mental and political considerations were more potent than the glitter of gold dust or the dreams of riches. So, finally, I purchased a passage on the Kimberley coach and made my exit from the Transvaal.

The Diamond Fields at the time of

In this way, then, without further adventure, I took my departure from South Africa.

II

In looking back I always find that the days spent in South Africa are among the most useful and personally interesting of my career. Just at the time when my intellectual and religious development was being subjected to tests, on the outcome of which to quite an extent the direction of my activities for the future was dependent, a sort of physical appeal to my manhood, and to my human sympathies, was experienced. It is quite clear to me now that a healthy and vigorous body and an adventurous spirit, such as I acquired in South Africa, were among the essential characteristics that later on enabled and encouraged me to go to work on wider problems than were to be found in the surroundings and routine of a switch-tower.

The voyage from Cape Town, South Africa, to Boston, Massachusetts, was uneventful; and there was not an incident connected with it, or a personage met on the way, that calls for attention. I arrived in Boston in the month of May, 1881. So far as my acquaintance with a single inhabitant of the United States was concerned, I might just as well have dropped down from the moon. I was almost as ignorant of the geography of the country as was Columbus at the time he was trying to figure out the location of the continent in the western hemisphere. My personal interest in the country dates from my conversation with 'Bull Run' Russell; and backed by a roving disposition, and a mind that was just beginning to develop its world-interest, I came over to America to investigate. My people in different parts of the world had already given me up as an irreclaimable wanderer.

Following along the lines of my special interest then, I began by spending some time wandering about the streets of the city of Boston, studying manners, conditions, and people. I had a little money in my pocket, and I was in no particular hurry to make myself known or to settle down at a fixed occupation. I visited churches, factories, stores, theatres, dance-halls, and the slums. To a certain extent, under different conditions, I had behaved in a similar manner in South America and Africa; but my points of view had been changing and, when I arrived in Boston I was no longer a boy, trying to protect myself from society and social temptations, but a man of considerable experience, with a more or less definite purpose.

My personal appearance at the time was a little out of the ordinary. I wore a corduroy coat with a belt, very negligée shirts, and on my wrists were a number of copper rings or Kaffir bangles, popularly worn by white people of those days in many parts of South Africa. But, to my mind, I was by no means as picturesque as the average Bostonian of the period. For one thing, the coat of the day was ridiculously short, and the significant feature of the male countenance was the popular 'mutton-chop' patch on the cheeks, which hitherto I had always associated with the box-seat of a carriage.

Still more astonishing was the costume of the women: hideous 'barberpole' skirts, which gave an up-anddown appearance to the faces, were supplemented by greasy-looking curls or ringlets patched indiscriminately on the forehead and occasionally on the back of the neck. Added to this was the huge, yet in some way jaunty, projection or bustle that brought up the rear of this typical female ensemble of the early eighties.

Turning from people to conditions,