Not only did the respected and self-respecting find their way to “The sign of the Blue Carboy.” A steady stream of “down-and-outs” came in the doorway, and many were those who were invited up into the little office with its panelled walls and tidy desk with pigeon-holes filled with tracts, for a talk with one whose tender heart was always touched by the sufferings of others. His employees in the shop noticed that they invariably came down the narrow stairs looking happier than when they went up, no doubt for tangible reasons! “He never gave them up” one member of his staff observed—indeed, in one or two instances, he “took them on,” and provided them with employment in his shop! “Herbert” was such a one, and Fred Mitchell never lost patience with him, even on the occasion when, seeing flames leaping up in the basement, he made no effort personally to put it out, but laboriously climbed the two flights of stairs up to the office, and then announced that something seemed to have caught alight down below! “I’d rather be taken in a dozen times than turn away a genuine case,” he said once, when the man he had helped proved to be a rogue. Did not the God with whom he walked cause His sun to shine on the unjust as well as on the just? At the same time, he had little room for able-bodied young men who unashamedly came around begging. When one such entered the shop one day, he found himself confronted by a stern-faced chemist with a glint in his eye who said grimly, “Young man, if you don’t get out of this shop I’ll give you not what you want, but what you deserve—the boot!”