For the younger lads there is another club, of one hundred and sixty members; they also have their gymnasium, their football, cricket, and swimming clubs; their classes for carpentry, wood-carving, singing, and shorthand; their savings’ bank, their sick club, and their library.

Only the better class of lads belong to this club.  But there is a lower set, those who lounge about the streets at night, and take to gambling and betting.  For these boys the children’s play-room is opened in the evening; here they read, talk, box, and play bagstelle, draughts, and dominoes, These lads are as rough as can be found, yet on the whole they give very little trouble.

Another important institution is the Country Holiday; this is accomplished by saving.  It means, while it lasts, an expenditure of five shillings a week; sometimes the lads are taken to the seaside and live in a barn; sometimes the girls are sent to a village and placed about in cottages.  A great number of the girls and lads go off every year a-hopping in Kent.

Add to these the temperance societies, and we seem to complete the organized work of the Church.  It must, however, be remembered that this work is not confined to those who attend the services or are Anglican in name.  The clergy and the ladies who help them go about the whole parish from house to house; they know all the people in every house, to whatever creed they belong; their visits are looked for as a kind of right; they are not insulted even by the roughest; they are trusted by all; as they go along the streets the children run after them and hang upon their dress; if a strange man is walking with one of these ladies, they catch at his hands and pull at his coat-tails—­we judge of a man, you see, by his companions.  All this machinery seems costly.  It is, of course, far beyond the slender resources of the parish.  It demands, however, no more than L850 a year, of which L310 is found by different societies and the sum of L540 has to be raised somehow.

There are, it has been stated, no more than seven thousand people in this parish, of whom nearly half belong to the Church of Rome.  It would therefore almost seem as if every man, woman, and child in the place must be brought under the influence of all this work.  In a sense all the people do feel the influence of the Church, whether they are Anglicans or not.  The parish system, as you have seen, provides everything; for the men, clubs; for the women, nursing in sickness, friendly counsel always, help in trouble; the girls are brought together and kept out of mischief and encouraged in self-respect by ladies who understand what they want and how they look at things, the grown lads are taken from the streets, and, with the younger boys, are taught arts and crafts, and are trained in manly exercises just as if they were boys of Eton and Harrow.  The Church services, which used to be everything, are now only a part of the parish work.