that might else be, perhaps, too uniformly kind
and courteous. So that the children have
every moral and mental element proper for
them—the care of the sick; hard, brisk, useful
work; discipline; affection; and the due
proportion of growling and fault-finding—the salt
which keeps all the rest in right condition.

I was specially struck with the look that
almost all the children had of having once been
starved, though now they were fed up. Some
certainly were of that gross and heavy kind
which does not show privation, but most were
still pale and with that peculiar outline which
denotes past emaciation. Some were very bright
and intelligent, and others, of course, just as
repulsive as these were attractive. One had a face
almost like an ape's, with the jerking manner
of an ape, a mere low-browed animal who
might be kept from evil courses, but who could
never be made of much value; a simple human
weed, poor child! predoomed to worthlessness
at the best, and glad if she might be kept from
active evil. One was like a gipsy, who, when
she was brought, had a black bonnet profusely
trimmed with blue ribbons and red strings
beneath. She was as wild as a hawk when she
first came, and for some time there seemed to
be but little chance of getting her into
anything like order or discipline. However, after
awhile, she was reclaimed from her excessive
unrestraint and turbulence, and is now useful
and energetic. It was just a direction of
power; and her power has at last found a
fitting channel. Some are stolid and scarcely
to be impressed by anything short of physical
force; and some are sensitive, and to be very
gently handled and made much of; some are
heavy, coarse, and sensual; some pretty, vain,
and light; some have the brand of vice upon them
even yet; and some have candid childish eyes,
as clear as your own little daughter's, and with
evidently no enduring mark of evil left upon
them. With some you would say, "surely no
good can be done here," with others "surely
no harm has been done here." Moral lepers
are some, whom not all the waters of Jordan
could (so it would seem) cleanse of their
leprosy; but the patient hope and unwearied
love of the Lady meets even the most repulsive
cases, and makes good of them. "No one
must imagine," she says, "that my family of
twenty children, from eight to fifteen years old,
is a collection of repulsive unmanageable
creatures. I wish those who come often among us,
and who employ my children at their own houses,
would tell you what they think of their
improved appearance and behaviour. I must only
say that my first year's work has thoroughly
confirmed my feeling, that the best remedial
discipline for such children is to be found in a
true family life of self-forgetfulness in work and
play, rather than in a well-ordered institution.
A well-ordered family we wish and try to be."

While I was there a lady, with a sharp face,
thin lips, and a ready frown, who boasted much
of her home cleanliness, and complained bitterly
of the want of sympathy and affection shown
generally by servants, came to ask for a little
maid out of this Home. I could not help
contrasting the happy well-ordered lives which
these poor little ones have under the Lady,
with the buffetings and sour rebukes, the sharp
thorns of temper likely to be their lot under
such a mistress as this one who now came to
ask for a servant of the Lady's training. And
yet it must be done! The time must come
when these young creatures have to turn out
of their nest and try their future with the
world; and though the Lady still keeps them in
sight, and they still have her as their refuge
should they need it, yet they will never know
the same sweet home life again; it is their one
glimpse into the best condition of humanity,
their one hour of peace and place of rest.

A bright little girl of fourteen manages the
laundry with all the deftness and precision
and care, of a woman of forty; one of seven is
the coal, or rather, coke woman—and the poor
little mite, thrusting her hand where it had no
business to be, got her fingers smashed. The
pain was intense but borne bravely; only when
her hand was bound up, and she was laid so far
on the shelf, she burst into tears, and said
sobbing, "But Lady! who will manage my
work and break the coke?" One little girl
there distinctly remembers her mother taking
her to one of the London bridges, and telling her
she would throw her over. She remembers her
frantic terror as she clung to her neck, while
the great black river swirled below, and how
she was rescued by a passer by and taken away.
When she was told that her mother was dead,
her only exclamation was, "Oh she was so
cruel to me!" There was no recollection of
love, no childish yearning, no tender passion of
regret—only the remembrance of that horrible
day when she was held over the parapet of the
bridge, and threatened with death—only the
remembrance of one long ceaseless act of
brutal cruelty.

Very sad, almost too sad to think of, are the
early lives of some of these poor castaways.
There is one, the child of a French woman and
an Italian soldier, who was left as a baby in long
clothes in a house in Soho, among people of by no
means doubtful character. Here she was brought
up—dragged up—with the alternative given
to her, when she reached eleven years of age,
of going on the stage as a ballet girl, or of going
on the streets. She was rescued just in time,
and before much evil had been wrought in her.
But she was rescued only just in time. She is a
passionate and self-willed child, but with a
conscience in the midst of it all, who has fits of
good and evil—alternating impulses—which
make her both dangerous and interesting. When
her evil fit is on her she turns her little Bible
pictures, which she has hung about her bed,
with their faces to the wall. At one time
she used to take them down and hide them,
now she only turns away their faces. She goes
to the Lady sometimes and says to her, that she
wants to run away, but that she must not let
her; that her bad fit is on her, and she wants