Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - Robert Michael Ballantyne (best ebook reader txt) 📗

must be carried away."

(The ragged army cheers.)

(_Host_.)--"Enough. Fall-to."

(They fall-to.)

(_Little boy_ in tatters, pausing.)--"_I_ shan't fall two, I'll fall three or four."

(_Another little boy_, in worse tatters.)--"So shall I."

(_First little boy_.)--"I say, Jim, wot would mother say if she was here?"

(_Jim_.)--"She'd say nothin'. 'Er mouth 'ud be too full to speak."

(Prolonged silence. Only mastication heard, mingled with a few cases of choking, which are promptly dealt with.)

(_Blobby_, with a sigh.)--"I say, Robin, I'm gettin' tight."

(_Robin_, with a gasp.)--"So am I; I'm about bustin'."

(_Blobby_, coming to another pause.)--"I say, Robin, I'm as full as I can 'old. So's all my pockits, an' there's some left over!"

(_Robin--sharply_.)--"Stick it in your 'at, then."

(Blobby takes off his billycock, thrusts the remnant of food therein, and puts it on.)

Enter the brass band of the neighbouring village, (the bandsmen being boys), which plays a selection of airs, and sends a few of the smaller ragamuffins to sleep.

(_Sir Richard Brandon_, confidentially to his friend.)--"It is an amazing sight."

(_Host_.)--"Would that it were a more common sight!"

Enter more domestics with more tea, buns, and fruit; but the army is glutted, and the pockets are brought into requisition: much pinning being a necessary consequence.

(_Lilly Snow_, softly.)--"It's like 'eaven!"

(_Hetty_, remonstratingly.)--"Oh! Lilly, 'eaven is quite different."

(_Dick Swiller_.)--"I'm sorry for it. Couldn't be much 'appier to my mind."

(_Host_.)--"Now, dear boys and girls, before we close the proceedings of this happy day, my excellent friend, your missionary, Mr Seaward, will say a few words."

John Seaward steps to the front, and says a few words--says them so well, too, so simply, so kindly, yet so heartily, that the army is roused to a pitch of great enthusiasm; but we leave this speech to the reader's imagination: after which--_Exeunt Omnes_.

And, as the curtain of night falls on these ragged ones, scattered now, many of them, to varied homes of vice, and filth, and misery, the heavy eyelids close to open again, perchance, in ecstatic dreams of food, and fun and green fields, fresh air and sunshine, which impress them more or less with the idea embodied in the aphorism, that "God made the country, but man made the town."


CHAPTER NINE.


HOW THE POOR ARE SUCCOURED.

"I am obliged to you, Mr Seaward, for coming out of your way to see me," said Sir Richard Brandon, while little Di brought their visitor a chair. "I know that your time is fully occupied, and would not have asked you to call had not my friend Mr Brisbane assured me that you had to pass my house daily on your way to--to business."

"No apology, Sir Richard, pray. I am at all times ready to answer a call whether of the poor or the rich, if by any means I may help my Lord's cause."

The knight thought for a moment that he might claim to be classed among the poor, seeing that his miserable pittance of five thousand barely enabled him to make the two ends meet, but he only said:

"Ever since we had the pleasure of meeting at that gathering of ragged children, my little girl here has been asking so many questions about poor people--the lower orders, I mean--which I could not answer, that I have asked you to call, that we may get some information about them. You see, Diana is an eccentric little puss," (Di opened her eyes very wide at this, wondering what "eccentric" could mean), "and she has got into a most unaccountable habit of thinking and planning about poor people."

"A good habit, Sir Richard," said the missionary. "`Blessed are they that consider the poor.'"

Sir Richard acknowledged this remark with a little bow. "Now, we should like to ask, if you have no objection, what is your chief object in the mission at--what did you say its name--ah! George Yard?"

"To save souls," said Mr Seaward.

"Oh--ah--precisely," said the knight, taken somewhat aback by the nature and brevity of the answer, "that of course; but I meant, how do you proceed? What is the method, and what the machinery that you put in motion?"

"Perhaps," said the missionary, drawing a small pamphlet from his pocket, "this will furnish you with all the information you desire. You can read it over to Miss Diana at your leisure--and don't return it; I have plenty more. Meanwhile I may briefly state that the mission premises are in George Yard, High Street, Whitechapel, one of the worst parts of the east of London, where the fire of sin and crime rages most fiercely; where the soldiers of the Cross are comparatively few, and would be overwhelmed by mere numbers, were it not that they are invincible, carrying on the war as they do in the strength of Him who said, `Lo, I am with you alway.'

"In the old coaching days," continued Mr Seaward, "this was a great centre, a starting-point for mail-coaches. For nigh thirty years the mission has been there. The `Black Horse' was a public-house in George Yard, once known to the magistrates as one of the worst gin-shops and resort of thieves and nurseries of crime in London. That public-house is now a shelter for friendless girls, and a place where sick children of the poor are gratuitously fed."

From this point the missionary went off into a graphic account of incidents illustrative of the great work done by the mission, and succeeded in deeply interesting both Diana and her father, though the latter held himself well in hand, knowing, as he was fond of remarking, that there were two sides to every question.

Checking his visitor at one point, he said, "You have mentioned ragged schools and the good that is done by them, but why should not the school-boards look after such children?"

"Because, Sir Richard, the school-boards cannot reach them. There are upwards of 150,000 people in London who have never lived more than three months in one place. No law reaches this class, because they do not stay long enough in any neighbourhood for the school-board authorities to put the law into operation. Now, nearly three hundred of the children of these wanderers meet in our Free Ragged Day Schools twice a day for instruction. Here we teach them as efficiently as we can in secular matters, and of course they are taught the Word of God, and told of Jesus the Saviour of sinners; but our difficulties are great, for children as well as parents are often in extremest poverty, the former suffering from hunger even when sent to school--and they never stay with us long. Let me give you an instance:--

"One morning a mother came and begged to have her children admitted. She had just left the workhouse. Three children in rags, that did not suffice to cover much less to protect them, stood by her side. She did not know where they were to sleep that night, but hoped to obtain a little charing and earn enough to obtain a lodging somewhere. She could not take the children with her while seeking work--Would we take them in? for, if not, they would have to be left in the streets, and as they were very young they might lose themselves or be run over. We took them in, fed, sympathised with, and taught them. In the afternoon the mother returned weary, hungry, dejected. She had failed to obtain employment, and took the children away to apply for admission to a casual ward."

"What is a casual ward, Mr Missionary?" asked Di.

"Seaward, my love,--his name is not Missionary," said Sir Richard.

"A casual ward," answered the visitor, "is an exceedingly plain room with rows of very poor beds; mere wooden frames with canvas stretched on them, in which any miserable beggars who choose to submit to the rules may sleep for a night after eating a bit of bread and a basin of gruel-- for all which they pay nothing. It is a very poor and comfortless place--at least you would think it so--and is meant to save poor people from sleeping, perhaps dying, in the streets."

"Do some people sleep in the streets?" asked Di in great surprise.

"Yes, dear, I'm sorry to say that many do."

"D'you mean on the stones, in their night-dresses?" asked the child with increasing surprise.

"Yes, love," said her father, "but in their ordinary clothes, not in their night-dresses--they have no night-dresses."

Little Di had now reached a pitch of surprise which rendered her dumb, so the missionary continued:

"Here is another case. A poor widow called once, and said she would be so grateful if we would admit her little girl and boy into the schools. She looked clean and tidy, and the children had not been neglected. She could not afford to pay for them, as she had not a penny in the world, and applied to us because we made no charge. The children were admitted and supplied with a plain but nourishing meal, while their mother went away to seek for work. We did not hear how she sped, but she had probably taken her case to God, and found Him faithful, for she had said, before going away, `I know that God is the Father of the fatherless, and the husband of the widow.'

"Again, another poor woman came. Her husband had fallen sick. Till within a few days her children had been at a school and paid for, but now the bread-winner was ill--might never recover--and had gone to the hospital. These children were at once admitted, and in each case investigation was made to test the veracity of the applicants.

"Of course," continued the missionary, "I have spoken chiefly about the agencies with which I happen to have come personally in contact, but it must not be supposed that therefore I ignore or am indifferent to the other grand centres of influence which are elsewhere at work in London; such as, for instance, the various agencies set agoing and superintended by Dr Barnardo, whose _Home for Working and Destitute Boys_, in Stepney Causeway, is a shelter from which thousands of rescued little ones go forth to labour as honest and useful members of society, instead of dying miserably in the slums of London, or growing up to recruit the ranks of our criminal classes. These agencies, besides rescuing destitute and neglected children, include _Homes for destitute girls_ and for _little boys_ in Ilford and Jersey, an _Infirmary for sick children of the destitute classes_ in Stepney, _Orphan Homes, Ragged and Day schools, Free dinner-table to destitute children, Mission Halls, Coffee Palaces_, and, in short, a grand net-work of beneficent agencies--Evangelistic, Temperance, and Medical--for the conduct of which is required not far short of One Hundred Pounds a day!"

Even Sir Richard Brandon, with all his supposed financial capacities, seemed struck with the magnitude of this sum.

"And where does Dr Barnardo obtain so large an amount?" he asked.

"From the voluntary gifts of those who sympathise with and consider the poor," replied Seaward.

"Then," he added, "there is that noble work carried on by Miss Rye of the _Emigration Home for Destitute Little Girls_, at the Avenue House, Peckham, from which a stream of destitute little ones continually flows to Canada, where they are much wanted, and who, if allowed to