OUR BOYS & GIRLS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 764, 22 October 1886, Page 5

OUR BOYS & GIRLS.

MY FIRST ARAB

BY T. J. BARNARDO, F.R.C.S., EDIN.

‘I don't live nowhere !’

‘Now, my lad, it is quite useless your tying to deceive me. Come over here directly and tell me truthfully what you mean by such a statement. Where do you come from? Where are your friends? yVhere did you sleep last night ?’ With this triplet of searching questions I elt - myself competent to penetrate the toughest shield of falsehood and deceit behind which the boy whose reply had so startled me might seek to hide. And certainly, in calling this child, who had given such a negative description of his whereabouts, to my side, that I might question him more closely, I never even supposed for a moment that his statement was a true one.

Now for two or three years I had attempted, as far as attention to my medical studies permitted, to conduct a voluntary night school among rough boys and girls, children of the poorer laboring class. I thus bad necessarily revealed to me much of the privation and suffering which so often fall at an early age to the lot of the children of the very poor. I had encountered many ragged, hungrv, and even cruelly ill-used little ones, but never as yet had a genuine arab boy of the utterly homeless and friendless tyjje crossed my path. Indeed, I had thought in my ignorance that the race existed only on paper, and that the stories about their condition and suffering in London and other large cities, which had occasionally attracted my attention, were mainly furnished by the fertile imaginations of certain writers whose love for the sensational had, I feared, overcome their strict regard for ih.' truth. I had, too, a vague notion, common to many others besides myself, that homeless children, if such really existed anywhere, were for the most part orphans of the poorest sort, aod were eventually taken due care of by the parish or workhouse authorities. I have therefore to begin my narrative with a confession of my complete ignorance, at the time referred to, of that hapless class, who, in the fierce struggle for existence ever being waged in large centres of population, suffer more keenly than any other, mainly because, being children, they are less qualified to resist the pressure of cold, hunger, nakedness, friendlessness, and fierce temptation, without falling victims in some sense ito their unhappy environment. It-is now just nineteen years ago since the

incident in question occurred, and, as my life has been a very busy one, it would not perhaps have been at all wonderful had an impression made upon me at so distant a period entirely faded from my memory. But such has not been the case, I never can erase from my mind and heart the im pressions then created for the first time, and indeed those feelings have, under providential circumstances, since risen to flood-tide, and changed for me the whole purpose, character, and motif of my life. Kven *lO w, as I write, the vision of that small street arab talking to me in the dingy East End room where we met nineteen years ago, and the very words of our conversation that night, are all as vivid and real to sight and memory as though our interview had taken place but yesterday. Devoting my days mainly to attendance at the hospital and dissecting-room, ana most of my evenings to needful study, I nevertheless reserved two nights a. week which I called my free nights, and which, as well as the whole of Sunday, were given rp to the conduct of a ragged school situated in a room in the heart of squalid Stepney.

How I remember that room ! W hat it had originally been I cannot say. A stable, I think—not such a stable as Belgravia knows, but a shed where donkeys are kept, and which to the East End mind might be therefore considered a stable ; but even the donkeys had gone. Boards had been placed over the rough earth. The rafters had been whitened, and so had the walls ; but much use of gas, together with the accumulated dirt deposits of three or four years, had changed the color to a dingier hue. Yet i and my student friends who helped me, thought it an admirable room, for was it not water-tight and wind tight ? Had we not good bars to the windows, almost capable of resisting a siege ?—by no means an unnecessary precaution in . that quarter. And, above all, was it not situated right in the very heart of an over wrowded, provertystricken district, filled with little one storey houses of four rooms each, every room containing its family ? and did not these families supply the tumultuous horde of youngsters who crowded eagerly rouud our doors, calling each one of U 3 ‘ Teachers,’ and, with varying degrees of attention, listened to what we had to say, or yelled in chorus their appreciation of some tuneful melody that had caught their ear? Such was the cradle of my work, and here it was that, on one ever memorable evening, after the general body of my young scholars had gone home, I noticed, standing on the hearth near the large fire kept burning at one end of the room, a little ragged lad, who I observed had listened quietly throughout the evening. He showed no symptoms of retiring with the rest; and as I was about to put the lights out I said : ‘ Come, my lad, it i 3 time to go home now.’ To this no reply was at first forthcoming. * Come, I say, yon had better leave at once, or your mother will be making enquiries for you.’ 1 ‘Please, sir,’slowly drawled the lad, ‘let me stop.’ ‘ Stop ! What for £ Indeed I cannot. I am going to turn the lights cut and lock the door. It’s quite time for a little boy like you to go home and get to bed. What do you want to stop for ?’ * Please, sir,’ he repeated, * do let me stop ; I won't do no ’arm.’ * Of course I cannot let you stop. Why do you wish to remain ? You ought to go home at once. Your mother will, know the other boys have gone, and will wonder what keep? you so late.’ ‘ I ain’t got no mother.’ ‘ But—your father ? / Where is he V * I ain't got no father.’ ‘Stuff and nonsense, boy; don’t tell me such stories ! You say you have not got a father or a mother; Where are your.friends then? Where do you live?’ ‘ Ain’t got no friends. Don't live nowhere.' , ~ , Then it was that, startled by a reply which came out slowly, with an amount of dogged insistence that almost compelled the feeling that there was something,behind it needing enquiry, I called the boy to mein the words with which this narrative opened. As I have already stated, I did not credit one word the boy said. I could not perhaps have there and then explained why he should deceive me ; bub falsehoods I felt sure his statements were, and I was resolved if possible to show him what a wicked little rascal he must be to bring forth such evil fruit from the pious lessons I had beeu trying to instil throughout the evening. . It was with slow and hesitating step 3 that the boy responded to my invitation to come nearer while I spoke to him. He moved each foot as though it were heavily weighted, and some seconds elapsed before he had drawn sufficiently close to enable me to examine him minutely. But there he now stood directly in front of me, either a mendacious young- scamp who deserved a good whipping, or one of the saddest little urchins I, at all events, had ever seen. , • -- -.

Which was it ? . . - Needless to say, I closely scrutinized the appearance of the child—for he was little more than a child—and to this hour, as I close my eyes, the face and figure of the boy stand out sharp and clear before my mental vision. The small, spare, stunted frame, clad in miserable rags—loathsome irom their dirt—without either shirt, shoes, or stockings, told me at a glance that here was a phase of poverty far beneath anything with which the noisy, wayward children of my ragged school had familiarized me. He said, in answer to my enquiry, that he was only ten years of age, though his face was not that of a child. It had a careworn, old-manish look, which was only relieved by the bright keen glances of his small, sharp eyes. This sadly over-wise face of his, together with the sound of his querulous, highpitched tones, as he responded glibly to my questions, conveyed to my mind —I knew not why—an acute sense of pain. _ Of course I cross-examined him searchingly, but I am bound to say, that although I felt utterly puzzled and .mystified by his statements, there was a ring of truth and reality in his voice, and an unconscious air of sincerity about him, which convinced me, ere I had half done my enquiries, that I was on the threshold of a revelation. * Do you mean to say,, my boy,’ I at

length asked, * that you really have no home at all, and that you have no father or mother or friends ?’

* That's the whole truth on’t, sir. I ain’t tellin’ you no lies.’ ‘ Where did you sleep last night V I added.

‘ Down in Whitechapel, along o’ the ’aymarket,'in one o’ them cart 3 filled with ’ay. There I met a chap as I know'd, and he tell’d me to come up ’ere to the school, to get a warm ; an’ he sed p’raps you’d let me lie nigh the fire all night. I won’t do no ’arm, sir, if you’ll only let me stop. Please do, sir.’ It was a raw winter night, and although there had been no snow or wet during the day, the sharp and bitter east wind seemed to penetrate to the very bone, no matter how snugly one was wrapped up ; and as Hooked at the little lad, whom I now know the Lord had sent me, and observed how ill prepared he was to resist the inclement weather, my heart sank within as I reflected, * If all this poor boys says is true, how much he must have suffered lately!’ Then, too, for the first time in my life, there rushed upon me with overwhelming force this thought: ‘ Is it possible that in this great city there are others homeless and destitute, who are as young as this boy, as helpless, and as ill prepared as he to withstand the trials of cold, hunger, and exposure ? Surely it cannot be possible, I thought, that to-night—-nay, at this very moment—there can be many such in this great London of ours, this city of wealth, of open Bibles, of Gospel preaching, and of Bagged Schools ? Instinctively I turned to the poor little fellow who stood beside me, anxiously awaiting the result of my cogitations, and asked him plainly the question which had forced itself upon me : -

‘Tell me, my lad, are there other poor boys like you in London without a home or friends ?’ What he thought of me I really do not know, but it was with a. grim smile of something like wonder at my ignorance that he replied promptly,— ‘ Oh ! yes, sir, lots —’eaps on ’em ; more’n I could count.’

Again a ray of comfort darted into my breast. This was too much of even a bad thing. The boy really must be lying. At any rate, I was resolved to put the matter to an immediate test. In a moment my mind was made up, and I asked : ‘ If I am willing to give you some hot coffee—as much as you.can drink—and to give you a place to sleep in, will you take me to where some of these boys arc, as y on say, lying out in the streets, and show me their hiding places ?’ Would he? Wouldn't he just? •I know not what visions of Elysium came into that poor boy’s mind at the bare mention of the warm meal and eo3V shelter ; but a ravenous, almost wolfish, expression stole, over his face as I spoke, and, nodding his head in a rapid succession of assents, he obeyed with wonderfully quickened step my direction to follow me at once. He had not much to say on the way to my dwelling, which was close by the London Hospital, but kept very near me, his little bare feet going patter, patter, on the cold pavement, his few rags pulled tightly across his chest, and a wretched apology for a cap, which I had not noticed before, drawn over head and ears. At length, having reached rhy rooms, he waited awhile in the hall, and then, when coffee was ready, he was called in and placed at the table opposite to where I sat A warm fire burnt on the hearth, and the little fellow’s chair was next to the fire, between it and the table. Poor little man ! How ravenously he ate and drank ! I almost feared to supply him, with such voracity did he recede and cause to disappear the food I gave him. But. the hot, sweet coffee put new life and vigor into his cold little frame, and, as my more recent experiences have shown to be the case with other children, the food and warmth and sense of relief served quickly to loosen his tongue, which when once it began to wag, was not easily stopped. (To be concluded )