This is to be a chapter about all sorts of odd things that cannot be fitted in anywhere else. For instance, have any of you heard about the Messenger Boys? If not, I think that will interest you. Someone once formed a scheme of having a number of boys trained to go messages, or take parcels, or do anything that was required in London. And he set up offices all over London, where anyone could get one of these boys and send him on a message by paying his expenses and a small sum also, according to the distance he had to go. At every one of the offices there are a certain number of boys always going and coming. They take the messages in order as they come, and they may get a nice one or a nasty one. If you went into one of these offices and saw the boys sitting on a bench waiting, you would soon see how it works. Some of the boys are playing draughts, some are reading, but all are ready at any minute to go where they are told. There is a young man in charge of the office, and someone comes in with a message. So he turns to No. 1, a bright, chubby-faced little lad, and says, 'Go to this address and call for a parcel for this lady, whose name is written down, and take the parcel to her house. Be as quick as you can, and you can take a taxi-cab.' Off goes the boy, delighted to get such a nice job, and he feels very important to call up a cab for himself. He knows exactly where to go and how much to pay the cabman, for he has learnt all that before. The next boy is a big, awkward-looking lad, very tall for his age, and the young man laughs a little as he gives him a message: 'You are to call at No. 50 in this street,' he says, 'and the lady will hand over to you two children aged three and four. You are to take them to the Zoo and let them have a good time, and bring them back before six o'clock.'

The big boy makes a face. He does not fancy this idea at all; it is like being a nursemaid, and he thinks how silly he will look with two wee children. And all the other boys are grinning; but he cannot refuse. He is like a soldier, and must do just what he is told. So off he goes and asks for the children. But when he finds he can take them up in a cab, and that they are dear, bright, happy little things, full of mischief, he begins to enjoy himself, and they spend a lovely afternoon together; and when he brings them back safely, and the mother gives him half a crown for himself in addition to his fee, he feels he has had a good day.

Some time elapses when he has left the office before smart little No. 3 gets anything to do, and then he is told to go to King's Cross Station to meet two schoolboys and see their luggage is safe, and take them across to Charing Cross. When he gets there he finds both the boys are bigger than himself, but they are country boys going to school for the first time, and are very frightened and bewildered, and little No. 3 cheers them up, so that they part quite good friends.

But these are a few of the odd things the boys have to do, and most of their time is spent in taking notes about. You can see them anywhere in London in their neat dark-blue uniforms with silver decorations. Once a gentleman walked into one of the Messenger Boy offices, and said quietly, as if he were saying nothing extraordinary, 'I want a boy to take a note for me to America.'

The man in charge showed no surprise, but only asked when the boy was to start. The gentleman said he might go the next day, which would give him time to get his clothes together.

The boy who was next on the list was called Jaggers, and he was a bright, intelligent little lad. He ran home eagerly to ask if his parents would let him go, and having got permission, he went off cheerfully the next day across the Atlantic Ocean to New York. He arrived safely and delivered his message, and then went on to Chicago and Philadelphia, as he had been instructed. He returned in eighteen days, having travelled 8,000 miles, and he found he was quite a hero, and the man who had sent him gave him a medal with a clasp or bar of silver for each place he had gone to. I think many a boy might have been frightened when told to go off to the other side of the world so suddenly.

After Jaggers another boy did an even pluckier thing. His name was Halsey, and he was sent to California, which is on the other side of America, much further than New York, and he had to go right across the continent and find the way all by himself, and he was given no time to get ready as Jaggers was, but started almost immediately. That boy afterwards fought for England in South Africa in the Imperial Yeomanry, and is now in a responsible position in the Messenger Service. Another boy was sent to the Sultan of Turkey to take a dog as a present. I think that must have been the most difficult to do of the three things, for the dog might have died on the way, and when the boy got to Turkey he would have the disadvantage of being in a country where a foreign language was spoken. These are exceptional cases, of course, but the boys are still sometimes sent to the Continent with messages. But enough about the Messenger Boys.

There is a sight to be seen in London nearly every evening, and particularly on Saturday evenings, that always seems to me to be most touching, and that is the rows of little children waiting outside the shops for food that is sold cheaply. In great shops which sell food that soon perishes—for instance, fish, or fruit, or bread-stuffs—there is often a certain quantity left over at night that will not be quite fresh in the morning, and so it is sold cheaply, and it is this that the children of the poor come to buy. Some shops almost give it away. On Saturday night, outside a pastry-cook's, there was a row of patient boys and girls, each with a basket or bag, and some had been standing there for a long time, because it is a case of 'first come, first served,' and no pushing is allowed. As another little child arrived it took up its stand at the end of the row, and waited until the time came for closing the shop. Then each child paid so much—say sixpence—and got a large quantity of bread, and so much cake, and if there was not enough to go round the last ones had to go away without any.

At the fish shops there are different ways of doing this at different shops. At one big shop all the fish that is over after the day's sale is done is put into a large basket—there may be a piece of cod, and several small fish, and some whiting or mackerel—and then each child pays twopence, and the man in the shop deals out the fish as it comes, giving so much to each, without asking what the children want. The poor little bairns watch eagerly until their own turn comes. See that big bit of cod? That would make a Sunday dinner for all of Ellen's people, and Ellen watches it anxiously. There is a very small girl in front of herself, and Ellen nearly cries when she sees the man put it into her bag; but she cheers up again when a whole fish, of what kind she is not quite sure, but still it looks very good, is passed on to her. There is no waiting afterwards. How the little feet run home, and how the shrill little voices cry, 'Mother, mother! look what I've got!' But it may be also that a disappointed little girl goes away, crying softly, for she came too late, so she had to stand quite at the end of the row, and when her turn came there was nothing left. 'No more to-night,' the shopman said cheerily, and seeing the pale, wistful little face, he added, 'Come in better time another week, little girl.'

The little girl stole away quietly, but when she got to a dark corner she sat down and cried bitterly; it was not so much for the sake of the fish as because she knew she would get a beating from her drunken mother when she went home without it. Yet she could not help it; she had had so much to do that day—work, work, work from morning to night, partly at school, partly at home—and she had run to the fish shop as soon as ever she could, only to find herself too late. Children, there are sad times in the lives of little girls such as these which none of you will ever know.

But, as we have said once or twice, the lives of street children are by no means all darkness; the merry games, the society of other children, and the stir and life of London make up for a great deal. In some of the streets you can see the boys running about on roller skates—bits of wood on tiny wheels, strapped on to their boots. The smooth London pavements are very good for this sport, and the boys skate about, getting wonderfully clever at it, and enjoying themselves immensely. Then they have their tops, which they spin on the pavements or in the roadway among the feet of the people walking, without minding in the least. There are tops all over the streets at some times of the year spinning gaily. The girls have their skipping-ropes, which are apt to be a nuisance to the people who want to walk on the pavements; but sometimes there is a side alley where no one goes, and here the children can skip undisturbed.

One game that seems a great favourite with the children is called 'Hop-scotch,' or 'London Town.' They draw a number of divisions on the pavement with white chalk, and then hop from one to the other kicking a bit of stone along the pavement with their toe; they must send it into the next square at every hop, and they must not put the other foot to the ground until they send it safely into the last division of all, which is Home or London. The little girls get quite clever at this, hopping lightly and daintily. Sometimes they draw a circle instead of a square, which makes it more difficult to do, but the game is the same.

When the barrel-organ comes round, as it very often does, the children dance; they don't mind that it has travelled in wind and weather for perhaps ten years, and that it has lost all tune it may have had, and only grinds out a horrible noise: they like the noise, and dance up and down holding their little skirts, or twirling one another round in great enjoyment. The streets do not allow of wild, romping games, and it would be dangerous to dash about and try to catch one another, so most of these are games that can be played on the pavement in safety.

The children who live near parks are luckier than those who have only the streets for playgrounds, and these parks are filled with children, especially on Saturday afternoons. There is one called Battersea Park, near the river, where you may sit on a little knoll at one end, and, in summer, as far as you can see there are boys playing cricket. They are so mixed up that it is difficult to tell which ball belongs to which, and often a good hit sends one ball flying into the middle of the next game. Some of them have real wickets, and at one end there is a carefully kept ground where men play; but some of the little boys have no wickets, and only a bit of wood for a bat. So they get a stick from somewhere and make it stand up in the ground, and then hang one of their shabby little coats round it to make a wicket; but they shout loudly with joy, and enjoy themselves at their game just as much as the bigger boys with real wickets.

A thing you very often see in London, and, indeed, in other towns, too, is a man sitting on the bare stone pavement drawing pictures on the stones with coloured chalks. Sometimes he does them very well, and makes scenes of battles and views of pretty places or ships at sea, but at other times they are hideous and badly drawn. He does this in order that people may give him pennies as they pass. He is not allowed to beg, and if he tried to the policeman would come and take him up; but he doesn't like hard work, so he sits beside his pictures and holds his cap out piteously, and very often people give him pennies in passing, so he makes a living without too much trouble. But unless he is old or crippled, he ought to be doing better work than this. There are always a great many odd men who have no work to do in London; there are some who earn a living by going about in the early morning, when people put their dustbins out, and picking out anything that they think they can sell—a disgusting trade; others used to watch until they saw a cab with luggage on it, and then they ran after it sometimes for miles and miles, and when it stopped they would offer to carry the boxes upstairs. These men certainly earned their money, for they had to run fast and far, and to carry a box up the flights and flights of stairs in a London house is not an easy task; but, unfortunately, they were generally men who were out of work through their own fault, who had been drunken or idle or rude, and they were not at all pleasant to deal with, and sometimes they made themselves very disagreeable if they didn't get what they considered enough money, and refused to go out of the house until a policeman was fetched. So it is as well perhaps that now this means of extorting money is impossible, for no man could run fast enough to keep up with a taxi-cab.

The barrel-organ man we have already mentioned. He is frequently an Italian, and has a dark-haired woman with him, and she wears a red handkerchief over her hair to make her look more foreign; and they go from house to house grinding out their awful tunes, and they get very well paid, for the people in the poorer shops and in the foreign parts of London like the noise, and give them pennies. Sometimes the man has a monkey, which always attracts the children. Other men walk about with barrows selling ice-cream; this is sold at a half-penny a time, and the children lick it out of little glasses and have no spoons: one wonders how often the glasses are washed. But that does not trouble the little street children at all; they follow the ice-cream man in throngs like flies in summer whenever it is hot. Poor little bairns! they have no milk to drink or nice cool rooms to go to, only the hot, dusty street, and they must often be thirsty. Well, all these things you can see in the streets daily, and a great many more. I have not spoken of the 'sandwich' man; that is a funny name, and it means the man is sandwiched between two great boards, which he carries on his front and back. On these are written in large letters the name of a new play, or a restaurant, or anything else to which someone wants to attract attention. These men are paid a very little each day; they are hired a large number together, and walk along by the side of the pavement with their great boards one after another, so the people passing in the street read the boards, and perhaps go to see the play or to dine at the restaurant. The men are bound to keep on walking always together all day, and they very often are ashamed of their work; for they may have been something better than this, for to be a sandwich man is about the lowest work a man can do, but, at any rate, it is earning money honestly, without begging or stealing.