SACRIFIED BRILLIANT CAREER TO AID YOUTH

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6902, 7 May 1929, Page 5

SACRIFIED BRILLIANT CAREER TO AID YOUTH

Story of Charles Young

DID GREAT GOOD DEEDS IX SECRET

One of the most beautiful of lives has just been ended. The story of Charles Edward Baring Young, who loved boys, is told in a London paper. If you had seen him in the street you would have thought ho needed help,” a friend says of him, "so shabby did he look with his worn coat and frayed trousers.”

One would not have thought Mr. Young could have been to Eton, or guessed that in his youth people said he might have been a Cabiuet Minister. Least of all would one have dreamed that he had given away a million pounds. The handsome, shabby old man guarded his see,ret from the world so well that when ho died only a few friends know what a wonderful story had ended. At last the truth is creeping out.

Charles Baring Young was born with nil the gifts that made him sure' of the world’s favour, aristocratic birth, wealth, good looks, and a brilliant mind. If he had been ambitious he would certainly have become one of the great figures of t.ho day, perhaps Prime Minister. But while he was at Eton he had begun to feel for the poor and sorrowful. He worked with Mr. Quentin Hogg, the father of the British Lord Chancellor and founder of the Regent Street Polytechnic. Mr Young entered Parliament, but he felt that ho could help the needy better in another way. Retiring to his beautiful estate at Daylcsford, in "Worcestershire, hear the Oxfordshire border, he founded a unique thing—a charity which was kept a secret. He took three houses in Eitzruy square, where G 6 homeless boys could be received, and then he built 'the Kingham Homes on Kinghaiu Hill, in Oxfordshire, eight houses for 30 boys oach, whore the waifs could grow up in country air and learn almost any trade they chose. This benefactor built costly workshops and employed higlily-skilled instructors. He laid out 500 acres as an agricultural school for boys who preferred farming, and bought a huge tract of land in Canada for those who wished to settle there. He also founded two factories to give the bo3 - s employment in later ycads. He endowed she homes richly. They never appealed to the public for money; it all came from, one man, who forbade his friends to speak of it. He spent money on these homes, and on all the enterprises connected with them, as if they had been his yacht, or his racehorses, or his business, or his hunt, or his shooting box. Mr Young was happy to the end. Only two or three days before he passed away, he was listening to the boys slinging hymns at liis open window. "Let them sing on,” he said; "I could listen for hours ” He himself kau written a hymn, and, with the help of his sister, prepared a volume of MUI) hymns. The faith of Mr Young was very simple: he believed in the Word <>t, God as plain men understand it. Ike chaplain of the bomps, who knew him well for many years, has said ot him that he never swerved a hair s breadth to the right or left from what he believed to be right. . One who knew Mr Young declared that “ho was the most lovable man 1 have ever known.” and described how, though he had three or four cars ahis country house, he would ? the same old “growler” meeting him when he returned from a visit to London Ho wore an old hat, faded green, and promised his wife a thousand times "to buy a new one. He Kept a piano factory and an iron foundry going at a loss in London to nelp to give boys work.