LITTLE “GATE CRASHERS”

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 80, 28 December 1929, Page 27

LITTLE “GATE CRASHERS”

SEVENTY UNINVITED CHILDREN

Some time ago a great deal was being said in London about people old enough to know better who went uninvited to big dances. They were called “gate crashers.”

A London writer relates an instance of seventy children who outdid the most daring of these grown-up “gate crashers.” •>

All through the recent English summer a group of social workers were taking slum children for country outings, and they flattered themselves that they could make no mistakes. The children chosen were lined up, and each' had a railway ticket pinned to the front of coat or dress. Then they were marched off to the station and counted as they filed in. They were checked again by railwaymen and the mission workers as they passed through the platform barrier into the special train. No one could get lost, no one could smuggle himself in uninvited. A kind man, too modest to give his name, sent some money to lloxton Market Christian Mission to give 400 poor children a day’s outing. From the very poor children who are given free meals at the mission hall 400 were chosen. On the promised day they were assembled, labelled, and marched off to the Liverpool Street Station. At the barrier they were counted and the

number was found all correct. Into the special train they were placed by five railway officials and a band of mission workers. But at the destination there were seventy more children than there had been at Liverpool Street! The workers were dumbfounded. So were the railway people. A policeman said the “gate crashers’ ” names and addresses ought to be taken and they should be sent back home. Little mouths began to tremble. One boy, asked how he could be so very paughty, said: “We must see the world somehow.” The ticket inspector and the secretary of the mission could not frown any more. “Sheep” and “goats” alike were marshalled out of the station into the glorious freedom of grass and trees. They all had a wonderful day of games, flower-gathering, and picnicking. But do not think that the “gate crashers’’ went unpenalised. As food ■had been taken for 400 children there were not enough sausage rolls to go round at dinner-time, nor sufficient buns for tea. The uninvited seventy had to dine on cake and content themselves with plain bread and butter for 'tea. But they did not mind. They sang / all the way home in the train, for, after all. they had seen the world—"somehow!”