The Sun.
London, England, 1871-02-04 00:00:00

Some gentleman who has undertaken a mission among
city savages supplies us with the information that a dinner
to three hundred hungry children costs exactly fifty
'shillings. From his account of a festival of the kind he
witnessed in the neighbourhood of Whitecross-street
Market we extract the foll )wing paragraph :
" Out-dinning the din of the Whitecross-street Sunday
morning market, the roar of leather-lunged costermongers
and barrowmen, the defeaning eloquence of the clashing
knives and steels of opposition butchers, the shrill cries of
women who have potherbs, and children's toys, and
second-hand shoes and boots on sale, the wrathful high-
pitched voice of the street preacher at this corner
of an alley, unable to make himself heard amid the
laughter created by a quack dealer in sarsaparilla at the
other corner, over all these conflicting noises the sound of
a bell was heard distinctly—not the measured chiming of
a church bell, nor the peremptory clatter cf a factory bell,
but a fitful and uncertain ringing, now loud and hasty
and urgent, like a fire bell ; now slow and laboured, like
the ringing of a bell-buoy at sea. A gentleman in the
baked potato interest, however, to whom I applied for in-
formation on the subject, ruthlessly stripped the bell of
everything in the shape of romance. It is the Costers'
Mission bell,' said he. And whereabouts is
the Costers' Mission?' I asked. That's it over
there,' said he, pointing towards a tall building in the
distance that towered above the houses. Go down
Golden-lane and turn up Hartshorn-court, and you'll come
at it if you wants to.' I had no previous intention of
coming at' the building in questien, but as soon as my
attention was fairly directed to it, the idea immediately
occurred to me. What a wonderfully fine view of this
curious neighbourhood might be obtained from the flat of
its tall roof? Half an hour afterwards, thanks to the ex-
cellent gentleman to whom the Costermongers' Mission
House owes its existence, I had mounted to the toptnost
story, and stood on the snow-covered leads looking down.
Next day I was present at a spread' at the Mission
Hall of a gratifying description. Next day was Wednes-
day, and for a very long time past, on this day, the good
missionary among the savage tribes of St. Luke's has
somehow contrived to raise from the charitable, money
enough to give the children—poor, neglected, literally
half-starved little flledgelings of the surrounding rookeries
—a hot dinner, a smoking-hot dinner, and as much as they
can eat of it. The reader accustomed to plentiful and
regular food can form no adequate idea of what a tre-
mendous boon this is. The poor little creatures look
forward to it as children who are better off look for-
ward to Christmas Day. From Monday till• Wednesday
evening the whispering of it grows and grows until it cul-
minates in a hooray ' that comes from the lowest
depths of their little empty bellies, when, morning school
concluded, they are informed that they may run home and
fetch their dinner things. At stroke of one o'clock here
they come trooping in, their young eyes twinkling in
blissful expectancy as their young noses sniff the
savoury stew seething in the cauldron below ;
and just done. I have not yet seen the caul-
dron ; and as they come swarming in, their
tiny ill-shod feet and their uncovered arms and legs
blue with cold, faster and thicker yet, till the doorway
bids fair to be blocked up, and there is still a mob
behind, I have misgivings as to my friend's declaration
that there will be enough for all and to spare ; and what
an awful thing it would be if, say, only a dozen of these
poor, narrow-chested mites of things who passed last night
in a delicious dream of Irish stew, who smacked their lips
over the breakfast slice of dry bread flavoured with
the promise of it, should be sent empty away !
I do not believe that they would survive the
shock. They would faint and fall, still clutching the
basin that was now a mockery and a snare ;
they would go mad and run amuck among
their more fortunate stew-consuming brethren. Here
they come, each one bringing his or her " dinner things." •
I wish the reader could see the choice collection ! Hand-
less jugs, milk cans, baking dishes, sauce tureens, small-
sized tin saucepans, publicans' beer cans, tin washing
bowls—anything. They come of all ages, from the
sturdy street boy of ten to the tiny six-months-old
baby in arms. There were scores of babies under
two years old, brought by their sisters and brothers.
They came singly, and they came in families.
One family in particular was a sight to behold.
A fortnight or so back a woman had died in one of
the alleys, and under such suspicious circumstances
that it was at first supposed that she had been murdered.
A coroner's jury thought otherwise, so she was buried,
and the matter dropped. But she left six little children
behind her—a boy, the eldest, of twelve, and a girl, a
patient, shrewd, poor little thing of nine, who now had to
be mother to the remaining four. She had brought
them out to dinner, and carried the motherless
baby, four months old, in her mites of arms ; and
there being no room on the forms, • and finding,
perhaps, that so sitting she could best feed baby and the
next-sized youngster who was little better than a baby,
she squatted on the ground with the little brood round
her distributing Irish stew, as grave and solicitous as a
matron of thirty. The elder children sat up in the
galleries with their vessels on their knees and their
shoulders bowed, and their countenances beautifully
bedewed under the combined influence of savoury
steam and energetic ' blowing' to reduce the
thick soup sufficiently below scalding point to admit of
its being swallowed. Waiters there were none, except
the schoolmaster. With his cuffs turned back and his
coat buttoned, he faced his herculean task like a man—
like a kindly Christian man with a heart that yearned
towards little children, and collected " empties" and
brought them back replenished, with an amount of
alacrity and good-humour that visibly touched the elder
boys' hearts as their stomachs filled and their appetites
slackened."

The usual monthly statement issued by the American
Secretary to the Treasury shews that on February 1 the
total debt, less cash in Treasury, was $2,328,026,807. This
is a decrease in January of $4,040,986.

Correspondence from New York to Madrid an-
nounces that Fish will retire in March, and that his suc-
cessor will be Senator Morton, of Indiana, the President's
right hand and confidential counsellor. He is an energetic
man, by no means friendly to Spain, but it is hoped no
further complications will arise about Cuba, as the ques-
tion seems to have attracted little attention in official
circles at Washington,