OUR BOYS & GIRLS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 867, 12 October 1888, Page 5

OUR BOYS & GIRLS.

HARD TIMESTHE SORROW OF A GREAT CITY. V' ' (Concluded.) A VERT COMMON STORY, Ted belonged to a highly popular street trade among the young gamins of London. He was a newsboy. My first introduction to him was when his cry of ‘ Buy a paper, sir?' fell upon my ears in one of our busy thoroughfares. It was a short and, alas, an all too common story that he had to tell me. He had had just before a continuous run of what he called ‘ill-luck’; in other words, he had not sold enough papers for several days to enable him to obtain a shelter at night in the lodging-house which he frequented. That was all—but it would bo hopeless to convey to my readers an idea of how much it menut, unless tbe shivering, ill-clad, pinched-looking little fellow stood before them to point the story. The lad’B distress had been accentuated by recent circumstances. He had been out in the miserable cold and wet, and the grim stamp of his privations and sufferings was all too manifest. He was eager to work if he could get work. Such an adventurous merchant he had been, too, in the only merchandise of which he knew the nature ! No friends had he to look to. There he was —as lonely and unbefriended as if he had dropped from the moon upon our busy planet. He was just fourteen, but he had had a lengthened experience upon the streets. I talked earnestly to him about giving up a street life, and upon the advantages of being regularly taught and trained. I do not think that at first he was very eager to accede to my suggestions, for liberty, as they understand it, is a precious heritage to these poor street boy-o, :sud it seems t.o some of them as though they are giving that completely up when they exchange the misery of the streets for the comforts of Home life. I was, however, successful in overcoming Ted’s objections ; and the bright face and sturdy appearance of the boy, now happily engaged in the workshops of our Home, suggests that the makings of a good mechanic are in the lad who was so short a time ago rescued from tho streets and the lodging-houses,

‘ BABY MINDERS.’ Edith and. her infant sister, eighteen months old, were the unfortunate children of a mother of the very worst possible class, who Was away every night till the smal hours from the wretched den in which they all lived, and who during ' the day 3 was ‘ meetly on the drink,’ to quote ber neighbours’ concise description. It goes without saying that the children were clad in rags; and even these were supplied by good Samaritans in the street whose hearts bad the warm touoh of human pity in them. They had no regular meals, but subsisted on the precarious bounty of passers-by, or on the occasional help of the neighbours. From early morning till late at night Edith, with the unfortunate infant, strolled abont the street in all weathers, or sat on doorsteps, of coarse doing nothing, under the pretext of ‘minding baby.’ The mother’s appeared to be tkJ hopeless ’ oase. She was simply drinking herself to death. It was only with very great difficulty I got both children away from her. That, however, lat length accomplished, and while Edith is unlearning the lessons of her neglected life in the Ilfovd Village Home, her baby sister is growing up amidßt the good influences of the Babies’ Castle.

- WAIFS AND STRAYS. In another case which came recently under my notice, the mother had died in giving birth to the baby, the father having predeceased her by some four months. There was a girl of eight, the oldest of the family. The baby was cared for,* after a fashion, by the poor neighbours in the squalid East-end tenement house where many families lived and children swarmed. But its existence seemed a continued miracle. Its big sister, eight years old, was its only nurse, and its sole nursery was the streets, early and late. It might be seen sometimes half thrown over its nurse’s shoulder, sometimes crawling feebly amongst the refuse of the gutter. But one day its nurse met with an accident : she fell, and of course baby fell too I The nurse’s leg was dislocated ; she was carried to the Hospital, and a neighbour had the good sense to carry the neglected baby to me. 1 found that this tsn-month3’-old mite had an emaciated body and an omnivorous appetite, testifying to its hard life. Though without teeth, it could devour the hardest crusts, pototo parings, and other street garbage. It seemed, indeed, a marvel how. so youDg a baby could have existed under the conditions of this infant’s up-bringing. Of course, however, nous avons change tout cela. Let visitors to our Infants’ Home entitled Babies’ Castle pick out Moggy, the Shad well baby, from among the tenderly-cared-for ohildren who are beginning life down by that favoured Kentish hill-side if they can 1 It will be no easy task, for Moggy is as round and rosy as the best of her happy foster, brothers and sisters.

A GENUINE STREET ARAB. Sam Lepper was a genuine street vagabond, an orphan and friendless, but honest-looking and brave-hearteil in his way. No one could know him without feeling that he waa a .fine sturdy young fellow, only in nesd of a helping hand. Without that helping hand, such as he are almost certain to become criminals. Here ia hia story, told in his own words in answer to questions when applying for admission to the Home. ‘Yes, sir, 1 works on my own account, but I’ve got a pardner, an’ we pullß together, an’ shares ekal. I ain’t got no father, nor ’aa my pal, but he's got a mother. She ain’t no good to him. Mine died a long while ago, long as ever I can remember. I does any. thin’for a living, sir, but mostly ‘papers and lights’ ; bnt if it's very wet I tries for a job down by the market. I used to stop at Slasher's, in Flowery Dean Street, but they’ve pulled it down and a heap more, so I ’ooked it to The Oval, Tabard Street ; but I sometimes goes up to Notting ’ill way at nights. It ain't a bad life when you’ve got used to it aud got plenty to do, an’ if you knows your ways about. I’m nigh on sixteen now, and I’ve never been looked up. I always keeps clear of the Bobbies. I’re been iu one or two hobbles, though, but got out all right—not for stealin’ nor nothin' like that,' but for loafin’ round and larkin’. There’s a livin’ to be got on the streets, but it’s hard work, werry, and then there's the cold and tbe wet and the bein’ down on yer luck and gettin’ into scrapes sometimes, and then you see it’s ail werry well now when I ain't growed, but in a year or so people won’t give me a job ; I’ll be too big for ’em then. They’ll call me a man, and there’s always a lot of men loafin’ about with nothin’ to do. There’s only us boys aB picks up a livin’. I’d like to go to Canada, sir. I’d be ready to go to-morrow, and if you'll give me a chance for Canada, I’ll be steady and work well.’

I or anyone who knows how to do it could go out into the streets, not only of London, but of any large city, and pick up dozens, scores, even hundreds of promising young fellows who would say ‘That’s me 1' to almost every detail of Sam’s simple narrative. All they want—-bnt, alas, that is all they have not got—is a helping hand to tide them over the waves of circumstance. It ia so little that will save them. They are plastic for good or ill to the moulding forces of their environment, and also the turn of a finger will decide with awful fixity the great lines of their future. Criminal or honest ? The Christian public have it in their power to answer ! In our Homes are scores of young fellows, each of whom has had his future life decided by just a trifle of help applied at the right moment ; and outside their walls there are hundreds who await, like

clay in the hands of the-potter, all unconsciously to themselves, the shaping hand of vic9 or virtue; I cannot help asking, ‘Which shall it be ?’ W ill my all friends ask themselves the same question ?

i. FIUVATEER SHOEBLACK. Joe Polish was a good-humoured, steady clever lad ; the box he slung aoross his shoulder waß of his own manufacture. But hd was as poor as could be, He seldom or never wore a coat, or had a coat to wear; his ragged shirt and an old pair of pantaloons were all the raiment he possessed 1 } yet the boy never whined, but always seemed as if he had no fault to find with his surroundings. He was bright, merry, and very respectful to those customers who patronised his box. He managed to evade school, not because be had no desire to learn, but because school necessarily took up much time that for him had to be spent in more practical ways • and so it is not to be wondered at that Joe grew up to his fifteenth year a veritable street heathen. I wish my readers could realise as I do when I have laid hands on a boy like, Joe, the full import and far-extend-ing issues of the deed. It is like saving a drowning man from the hungry billows, or like snatching a life from a burning house. It restores to the rescued, in no mere metaphorical sense, a life which ne has almost lost, and spreads before the poor fellow a bright and happy future. ' - i

There is, I think, no work on God’s earth to be compared with this, —the saving of poor boys and girls from the perils of the streets, the dangers of orphanhood, and the more serious evils which flow from sin and ignorance. If Christian men and women throughout England, and all over the world, will but continue to hold up my hands, I will press on unfalteringly with that work of rescue while God gives me breath. ' -For the * Flotsam and Jetsam ’ of wrecked humanity consist, in the sight of Heaven, of jewels which may shine in the Redeemer'll crown forever ! Ah I—who1 —who will help us to gather them in? Communications should be addressed to T. J. Barnardo, 18 to 26, Stepney Causeway, London, E. . \ :