Chapter 8

HOW I HEARD OF OLD NEIGHBOURS.

In the afternoon a gentleman entered the building, whose noble and commanding appearance struck me. After a short examination of the captives in their cages, he sat down to rest himself nearly opposite the place where I was hidden.

He was almost directly joined by a bright-haired boy, in whose cheeks health was glowing, and whose blue eyes sparkled with intelligence and enjoyment.

"Papa-- please-- I want more money to buy buns for the animals!"

"My dear boy," replied the gentleman, in an expostulating tone, "you have had a whole dozen already; I do not think it right to spend more on pampering well-fed animals, when so many of our fellow-creatures are suffering from hunger."

"Oh, papa! do you think there are many?"

"I believe that in this city of London alone there are thousands,-- yes, tens of thousands, who know not, when they rise in the morning, where they shall find a morsel of food during the day. I did not tell you what happened to me when I was in the city, Neddy."

"Do tell me now," cried the boy, seating himself by his father, "while we rest a little quietly here."

"I was walking along a narrow gloomy lane on my way to the shipping-office, when suddenly I felt a hand at my pocket. Mine was instantly down upon it, and I captured a little thief who appeared to be about your own age."

"The little rogue!" exclaimed Neddy, indignantly. "And what did you do with him, papa? Did you give him over to the police, or thrash him soundly with your stick?"

"I grieved to see one so young already plunging into crime."

"Yes, that is the worst of it," said Neddy. "If he is so bad as a boy, what will he be when he is a man! He will be sure to end on the gallows! I hope you punished him well, papa."

I pricked up my ears on hearing this conversation; I could not help connecting it with what Bob had told his lame little brother; I therefore listened with peculiar interest. Not that, as a rat, I could understand the word _crime_, or know why human beings feel it wrong to seize anything that they want and can get. It was evident to me that they are governed by laws and principles quite incomprehensible to my race. For as man has no scruple in taking from rats their lives and their skins, so rats, on the other hand, have no manner of scruple in taking all they require from man.

But to return to the gentleman and his son.

"No, Neddy, I did not punish the child," replied the former gravely. "I looked at his meagre form clothed in rags, his wasted countenance prematurely old in its expression of sorrow and care, his hollow eyes, his sunken cheeks,-- and I thought of you, my son!" the gentleman added, with a sigh.

"Well," said Neddy, "I hope there's a precious deal of difference between me and a beggarly thief!"

"What has made that difference?" said the gentleman, laying his hand on the shoulder of his beautiful boy. "I questioned that unhappy child. I found him ignorant of the first principles of virtue. His mother is dead, his father in jail; if he has learnt anything from those around him it is only a knowledge of vice. Pinched by hunger, homeless, friendless, ignorant even that he has a soul, it would be a miracle indeed if he followed the straight path of which he has not so much as heard! What can we expect him to be but a thief,-- what would you have been in his place?"

Neddy looked thoughtful and was silent. Then raising his blue eyes to his father's face he said, "And what did you do to the boy?"

"I first tried to relieve a little his pressing bodily wants; to take from him, at least for one day, the temptation to commit a theft. But I knew that the temptation would recur again, and as long as he continued in blind ignorance, there could be small hope that he would even wish to resist it. I remembered that my watchmaker had given me the direction of a Ragged School at which his daughter taught; spending her time and energies as so many do now, in this noblest labour of love. This school was not very far off, and I resolved to take this opportunity of paying it a long-intended visit. I took the poor little fellow with me, and spoke to the superintendent, who readily agreed to receive him. He will there learn some way to earn his bread honestly; he will be taught to know right from wrong; he will hear, perhaps for the first time, the voice of kindness; and he may yet live to be respectable, useful, and happy."

"Oh! papa, do you think that after once being a thief he is ever likely to turn out good for anything!"

"The experiment has been tried over and over again, Neddy, and many times it has been mercifully attended with success. The idle _have_ become industrious, the thieves honest, the vicious been reclaimed, the lost found and saved! I will tell you a striking occurrence which really took place in a reformatory for thieves. Not one of the inmates there but had broken the laws of his country, and committed the crime of theft. But mercy was giving them a chance to redeem the characters which they had lost, and they were learning various trades, by which to support themselves in honest independence. A subscription, as you may remember, was raised at the time of the war with Russia, to help the widows and orphans of our gallant soldiers. From the Sovereign on her throne, to the labourer in the field, from rich and poor, high and low, contributions to the Patriotic Fund poured in.

"The thieves in the reformatory heard of the subscription; they longed to aid it, but what could they do? they had no money, they owed their very bread to charity, for they had not yet acquired sufficient skill in the trades which they were learning, to pay even their necessary expenses."

"They could not give what they had not got, papa, if they wished to be generous ever so much."

"Where there is a will there is a way, Neddy. These poor fellows were so anxious to help the widow and the orphan, that they asked and obtained leave to go a whole day without food, that the money so saved upon them might be paid into the Patriotic Fund."

"And did they really starve a whole day?-- have neither breakfast, nor dinner, nor supper,-- and all go hungry to bed?"

"They did, Neddy, _all_ the thieves in that reformatory* did; and I doubt if amongst the hundreds of thousands of subscriptions to the Patriotic Fund, any showed so much real generosity and self-denial as the contribution of the reformed thieves!"

"Oh! there was hope for such men indeed!" exclaimed Neddy, the moisture rising into his eyes. "There must have been good in them, papa, and I should not wonder if some of them turned out really fine fellows."

"I have no doubt of it," said his father with a smile.

"And that poor boy-- yes, I hope that he may amend. Shall we hear anything more of him, papa?"

"You know that we go out of town to-morrow. On my return I shall make inquiries regarding him at the Ragged School, and if I find that he is improving under the instruction which he will receive, I shall try to do something for him."

"May I go with you?" said Neddy eagerly, "I should like to visit the school."

"I think that I shall take you with me," replied his father.

"What a glorious thing it is," exclaimed the boy after a pause, "to raise ragged schools and reformatories, to give the poor, the ignorant, and the wicked, a chance of becoming honest and happy! How I should like to build one myself!"

"It would be more practicable for you," observed the gentleman, smiling as he rose from his seat, "to support those which are built already."**

"But, papa, I can do so little!"

"Every little helps, my son; the vast ocean is made up of drops. You may do something yourself, and try to interest others in the cause of the desolate poor. Were all the children of the middle classes in England to give each but one penny a-week, no wretched boy need wander about desolate in London, to perish both here and hereafter because no one cared for his soul!"

[* The Reformatory in Great Smith Street, Westminster.]

[** The office of the "Ragged School Union" is at 1 Exeter Hall, London. By this admirable society twenty-two thousand poor children have received instruction during the past year, while five hundred of the most destitute have been provided with homes in refuges and reformatories. To show the habits of prudence inculcated in the schools, it is only necessary to state that in the same year ragged scholars placed in saving-banks a sum of no less than three thousand four hundred and thirty-nine pounds! Seventy of those who now teach in the schools, were once ragged scholars themselves, thus imparting to others the benefits which they had received when poor ignorant children.

But the funds of the society are by no means sufficient for the work before it, though many of its teachers are unpaid, seeking no reward upon earth. There are numbers of ragged children in London, as desolate as those whom I have described, who have never known the blessing of a ragged school, and who, if they implored the shelter of a refuge, must implore in vain, for they would find no room.]