excitement he felt in his new position. When,
sometimes, the young men gather in a knot
and talk about their old practices or
comrades, Mr. Walker, if he chance to be at hand,
may say, " Don't let us bring Horsemonger
Lane out here. Let us dig a grave to bury
the past in, and begin a new life."

To lead them to forget their past as much
as possible, to feel that when entering his
garden gate they come to make a perfectly
new start in life, is the shrewd nursery-man's
first endeavour with his labourers. He aids ,
and encourages them quietly, by talk over their
work, as each in turn happens to be busy and
alone with him in a hot-house or beside a
flower-bed. Out of the garden, in the London
haunts of the depraved, he is known of
many and respected for his toil on their
behalf. Sometimes, a hapless fellow, sick of
wickedness and anxious to make that new
start for which opportunity is offered, walks
out towards Clapham and appears at the
gate of Wellington Industrial Nursery, to
ask for work and hope. It is a pity that there
should not be room for all such applicants.
Once Mr. Walker went into Field Lane,
a wretched thieves' quarter near Saffron Hill.
He was well known, and in a short time had
a crowd of fifty wretched youths about him,
praying to be taken on among his gardeners.
He selected three; there was not room for
more. The forty, whose good impulses were
felt in vain, thrown back perforce upon their
cunning, continued to find population for
the gaols. Three went to Clapham and began
new lives. Two of these have obtained
situations in a farm, where they are reckoned
among his best and safest hands by their
employer, and the third is in the garden still.
We saw him there, the only one upon the
sick-list, suffering from the effect of his zeal
in painting on, because the painting had to
be completed in a given time, although he
had begun to feel ill consequences from the
lead, and had been warned aud exhorted to
stop work. His disobedience, at any rate,
was dictated by gratitude and by some energy
of kindness. Let us, however, duly give
to this youth the discredit of his unsentimental
side. He had been roasting blackbirds.
He had taken a nest with two
blackbirds, which he had found himself
unable to keep alive; then, as he could not
cherish them, he ate them, and we were not
sorry to learn that they sat uneasily upon
his stomach. Upon this hint we may remark,
that the reform of these poor fellows does
not mean the imparting to them of any
special refinement, any great delicacy of
sentiment. It means also, only now and then,
the working of a deep and manifest religious
change. They cease to be thieves, as they
acquire strength and means to lead an honest
life; they unlearn desultory habits and get
into ways of active, steady work. A certain
refinement of character naturally follows
upon such a change, but it need not be much.
A certain sense of God, the acquirement of
at any rate some sort of religious tone, belongs,
of course, to ths acceptance for the first time
of a code of morals; but, there is not necessarily,
although there is sometimes, what is
called inward repentance or awakening. Mr.
Walker tries for that, but without strain;
he is well satisfied if the reformed thieves
become only as good as three-fourths in the
number of the honest men, to whose ranks
they pass over.

We will show by an illustration in what
spirit the young men at the Industrial
nursery are managed. Each has for dinner half
a pound of meat, and goes for his own half
pound to the butcher's. A new-comer—call
him Gilks—had been sent with a hopeless
character from a situation in which he had
robbed his master. Another committal to
gaol would surely ruin him; his master urged
that he should try for the new start in life
at Clapham, and he was received accordingly
at the Nursery as a youth who could
be trusted with nothing.

"We must try Gilks," said Mr. Walker to
his housekeeper.

"Don't try him with money," said the
housekeeper, " let us notice how he behaves
with his meat."

Gilks in a few days came home from the
butcher's with a quarter of a pound of
meat, which he delivered at the kitchen as all
that had been given for his money. Mr.
Walker was informed of this. Inquiry was
at once made of the butcher, and it was found
that only a quarter of a pound had been
bought.

"Very well," Mr. Walker said to the
housekeeper, "cook his morsel of meat
separately, give it him for his dinner, and let me .
know if he complains."

Of course, he came in loud with the
declaration that he "hadn't his allowance."

"Certainly you have not," said Mr. Walker;
"you pleased yourself in buying a light dinner,
and you have got it. You chose to have
your dinner partly in your plate and partly
in your pocket, and you have got what you
chose."

The thief blushed and stammered. Mr.
Walker then went into the room where the
other youths were dining, and said:

"Gentlemen, do you know what Mr. Gilks
has been doing? He has bought himself
only four ounces of meat, and asks me to
make up to him half a pound off his
companions' plates. Have I your leave to do
so?"

Certainly he hadn't, and Gilks heard afterwards
so much from his comrades about
"that pound of rumpsteak that he wanted
to divide among us," as to be fairly worried
into honesty. He never tried another theft.
Had he been thrashed for his delinquency,
condemned to a black hole, or so punished as
to waken up all the more thoroughly the
demon in his nature, he would probably have