placid waters, the moment which is to consign
her for so many long weeks to the mighty
waves of the Atlantic—and there——"

"Say no more," I cried,—"say no more,
the idea is magnificent, and we'll carry it out
to-morrow."

The manner of our carrying it out is this.
At half-past one Topper is to call for me;
and, after a light luncheon, we are to make
our start. Now, Topper has his anxieties.
Who hasn't? Topper says that I can have
none, being a single man. And this, by the
bye, used to be a subject of dispute with
us. For it is a curious thing, and one
worthy of note, that there is a tendency in
humanity to lay claim to a monopoly of cares
and anxieties, and that nothing is more
common than for people to say, because one
happens to be single, "Ah, my dear fellow,
you don't know what trouble means. Look
at me!" And I am so used to this now, that
I have abandoned the field, and given up
even venturing to hint that I ever have, or
have had, any annoyance, anxieties, or cares
of any sort or kind whatsoever. Well,
Topper's cause of anxiety at this moment is
this. He has a son at a certain great city
school, who, having more taste for green trees
and fresh air, than for the attractions of a
crowded thoroughfare, interesting though
that thoroughfare is, and though the smell
from the neighbouring meat-market is one of
the most refreshing things, especially in hot
weather, that I am acquainted with; this
young gentleman, I say, sets off one day
without leave for a country walk, and being
captured and brought back again to school,
is necessarily and rightly there in a state of
temporary disgrace and generally under a
cloud. So Topper is anxious about him, and
we determine, as we are going through the
City, to call at the school and see how the
boy is getting on.

As we passed the playground of the school
on our way to its entrance, we saw this
young gentleman squeezing as much of
his countenance as circumstances permitted
through the bars which agreeably surround
that place of recreation. And, indeed, this
flattening of the bones of the face against
these barriers of iron appeared, as far as we
could see at a hasty glance, to be the only
means of amusement that was to be had.

Well, it was an embarrassing thing when
Topper, who is ever appearing in some new
phase of this kind, turned round to me just
as we were entering the school, and said:
"You know, you'll do the talking, Charley.
It will come better from you."

"Come better from me." What an
extraordinary idea. But there was no time to
expostulate, as the boy was before us in
another moment, and Topper, with a
countenance in which an attempt at severity
struggled with a strong tendency to take the
lad up and hug him, remained perfectly
silent; and, looking loftily over the top of my
head, left all the conversation, as he had
threatened to do, to me.

Under such trying circumstances, that
Topper is obliged at last, in order to break
the silence, to compromise matters in a very
remarkable manner, by talking to the little
urchin through me. Standing then rather
nearer to the lad than I did, Topper, still
looking in an exalted manner over my
head, asks me, if the boy is penitent;
whether he is aware how miserable he
has rendered his parents; whether he is
going to be good now and ever afterwards,
and a variety of other questions equally
difficult to answer. The little fellow,
apparently much puzzled by this course of
treatment, begins to cry; and, as he makes a free
use of his knuckles as a means of staunching
his tears, Topper, still to all appearance
addressing the architecture at the back of
my head, asks me (with strong symptoms
of wanting a handkerchief soon himself),
whether the boy hasn't got one of those
useful appendages of civilisation about him?
It is the last question in which I am
involved; for, upon the answer reaching us
through intervals of sob, that the article in
question is in his ward, Topper fairly breaks
down; and, the next moment, I find him, all
his dignity gone, wiping the boy's eyes with
his own bandana.

It was in walking from this school to
the Blackwall Railway, that we naturally
enough began to talk of the extraordinary
perversity of ideas that could induce any one
for a single moment to defend such a piece
of rampant insanity as the keeping shut up in
the heart of a vast City a number of children
such as we had just seen, penned into that
gloomy enclosure, and looking as pale and
listless as might be expected of boys so
situated. It is bad enough, one is apt to
think, looking at the white faces that
surround one in this town of London, that men
and women are obliged by the nature of
their occupations to live in this foul air, and
surrounded by sights, sounds, and smells,
little conducive to health or happiness; but
that children should be brought up in such
places, where so many of the means of education,
using the word in its large sense
(including the bringing up of the body as well
as that of the mind), are, and always must
be, wanting, is an absurd enormity the
champions of which might be wholesomely birched,
to the great profit and comfort of the
community.

Through the City; through Stepney,
Limehouse, Poplar; past stagnant docks, but high
above them, and almost among the masts of
ships that float there; over the roofs;
between stacks of chimneys; among garret
windows, the rude and iron road we travel
by, forces its black, relentless way. Is there,
then, no end to the town this way? These
frail and squalid rows of houses—these vast
and barren factories—is their line to stretch