What strikes one at first is the extreme brightness and cheerfulness of the people, often under very adverse circumstances. I remember giving a series of garden-parties when I was Rector of Bethnal Green, in the little garden attached to the rectory. There was not much room for anything, and the only amusements were skittles and races, whilst tea and cake and bread-and-butter were the simple refreshments; but not only—as you will see by the photograph—were the visitors very content with themselves, but one of them, from one of the poorest streets, met me the day after a "party" and said:
"Rector, we did enjoy ourselves yesterday."
"I am very glad of it," I replied.
(Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd.)
"OXFORD HOUSE"—THE PRESENT BUILDING.
"But we very nearly didn't come."
"Why not?" I asked.
"Oh! You see, a man down our street, 'e said, 'Don't go—the Rector only wants to show you a few old gravestones.' But we tell 'im now we couldn't have enjoyed ourselves better if we'd been at Marlborough 'Ouse."
Then the children of East London are truly delightful. Poor little bairns! they often get pale enough spending the year in those crowded courts and alleys—and few things are doing better work in London than the Children's Country Holiday Fund, which sends about thirty-one thousand each year for a fortnight into the country—but still nothing daunts their spirits or dims their affection. Often have I been cheered through an afternoon's visiting by a group of children who would spend their half-holiday afternoon in waiting quite quietly outside a sick-room in order to knock at the door of the next sick case to which they were quite 'cute enough to know that I was going, and so on right down the street. Many of the clergy organise Band of Hope entertainments, and teach the children to act little plays of their own, and there are no quicker and apter pupils than the children of East London, as the prizes carried off yearly at the Crystal Palace will show.