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sin, experienced the change called conversion, and in the first ardour of his zeal he resolved to dedicate himself to the cause of Chinese missions. Desiring to attain medical knowledge as well as theological training, he came to London, and entered himself as student at the London Hospital. He had hardly commenced working when the cholera broke out. A wild stampede took place, leaving ample room for volunteers. Dr. Barnardo, although then only a raw student, volunteered for cholera service. His offer was eagerly accepted, and he

"BABIES' CASTLE," HAWKHURST.

began the house-to-house visitation of the East-end poor which gave him so deep an insight into the conditions of their life. He did not spare himself in those days. He says:

Devoting my days mainly to attendance at the hospital and dissecting-room, and most of my evenings to needful study, I nevertheless reserved two nights a week which I called my free nights, and which, as well as the whole of Sunday, were given up to the conduct of a ragged-school situated in a room in the heart of squalid Stepney.

That was how he came to be in the way with JimJames Jervis, the messenger of the Lord.

There were other medical students associated with Barnardo in the ragged-school work. The school was held in a disused donkey stable. It was worse even than the "small chamber" where,

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Boards had been placed over the rough earth. The rafters had been whitened, and so had the walls; but much use of gas, together with the accumulated dirt deposits of three or four years, had changed the colour to a dingier hue. Yet I and my student friends who helped me thought it an admirable room, for was it not water-tight and wind-tight? Had we not good bars to the windows, almost capable of resisting a siege ?-by no means an unnecessary precaution in that quarter. And, above all, was it not situated right in the very heart of an overcrowded, poverty-stricken district, filled with little one-storey houses of four rooms cach, every room containing its family?

To this place one night in 1866 came Jim, not, it must be admitted, with the slightest suspicion of the importance of the message with which he was charged. Neither had he come from any desire to be taught, as he frankly admitted. Another lad had told him of the school, or as Jim put it, "He tell'd me to come up 'ere to the school to get a warm, an' he sed p'raps you'd let me lie nigh the fire all night." It was a raw winter night and a keen east wind was shivering through the dimly lit streets, when all the scholars having left the room, little Jim still lingered, casting a longing look at the fire. He had neither shirt, shoes, nor stockings, Small sharp eyes, restless and bright as a rat's, gleamed

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Please, sir, do let me stop. I won't do no'arm." Stop in the schoolroom!-the idea seemed absurd to Barnardo.

"What would your mother think?"
"Ain't got no mother."
"But your father?"

"Ain't got no father."

"Stuff and nonsense, boy; don't tell me such stories! You say you have not got a father or a mother. Where are your friends, then? Where do you live?"

"Ain't got no friends. DON'T LIVE NOWHERE."

And when little Jim had thus delivered his message, the man to whom it was delivered was sure he was lying. For the young medico, with all his experience of Stepney, had at that time never heard of the great Bedouin tribe of the Don't-Live-Nowheres.

III. WHERE THE DON'T-LIVE-NOWHERES SLEEP.

Assuming his most inquisitorial air, the young doctor proceeded to cross-examine Jim in order to convict him of scandalous falsehoods. But Jim was a witness of truth, and not to be confounded. He told his simple story and stuck to it, begging lustily to be allowed to sleep all night by the fire, which seemed-no wonder-so fascinating in its light and warmth.

And as he was speaking a sense of the meaning of his message suddenly smote the young medico to the heart. For the first time in his life there rushed upon him with overwhelming force this thought: "Is it possible that in this great city there are others also homeless and destitute, who are as young as this boy, as helpless, and as ill prepared as he to withstand the trials of cold, hunger, and exposure?"

Is it possible? He must promptly put it to the proof. "Tell me, my lad, are there other poor boys like you in London without a home or friends?"

He replied promptly: "Oh! yes, sir, lots-'eaps on 'em; more'n I could count."

Now the young Barnardo did not like to be hoaxed. So being of a practical turn of mind, he bribed Jim with a place to sleep in, and as much hot coffee as he could drink, if he would take him there and then-or at least after the coffee had been drunk-to where the Don't-LiveNowheres sleep. His incredulity was natural. How often I remember that marvellous tales of what could be seen here and there dissipated into thin air when I

asked to be taken to see them.
his facts, and could produce his vouchers.
Jim, however, knew

After drinking as much coffee as he could swallow he
imparted to his teacher-who was now the taught,
learning a far greater lesson than ho had ever given
the reasons why he was sure that Jesus Christ was in
very deed the Pope of Rome, for hadn't his mother
crossed herself when she named the Pope, and the black
dressed man who came when she died crossed himself
when he said Jesus, and was that not enough proof to
satisfy any one? Now, although from his youth up the
Pope of Rome has been Antichrist in Barnardo's eyes,
at that moment it was absolutely nothing to him whether
the boy was a Roman Catholic or a Jew or a Mohammedan.
He was moved by one fact only-the poor little chap's
utter friendlessness.
strange teacher when he found to was likely to be
His touching confidence in the
his friend fairly took Barnardo's heart captive.
let the Don't-Live-Nowheres sleep where they might,

Jim must at once without losing a moment be rescued
from that heathen darkness. So he turned to and told
little Jim as graphically as he knew how the story of the
Passion of our Lord.
tale was new, and to him it might have been the story of
The lad was interested, for the
a poor bloke in the next alley. But when it came to the
crucifixion, little Jim fairly broke down, and said, amil
his tears, "Oh, sir, that wor wuss nor Swearin' Dick sarved
me!"

At last, half-an-hour after midnight, they sallied forth on their quest for the sleeping quarters of the Don'tLive-Nowheres. Jim trotted along leading his new made friend to Houndsditch, and then diving down the shedlike alley of the 'Change that leads by many passages from Petticoat Lane. Here they were at last, but where were the Don't-Live-Nowheres? Barnardo thought that ho had caught Jim out. There was not a soul to be seen.

He struck matches and peered about under barrows and into dark corners, but never a boy could he discover. "They durstn't lay about 'ere," said Jim in excuse, "'cos the p'licemen keep such a werry sharp look-out all along on these 'ere shops. But we're there now, sir. You'll see lots on' em if we don't wake 'em up."

But Barnardo could see nothing. A high dead wall stood in front, and nover a lad was to be seen.

"Where are the boys, Jim?" he asked, much puzzled. "Up there, sir," replied Jim, pointing to the iron roof of the shed of which the wall was the boundary.

How to get up was the next question, but Jim made light work of this. His sharp eyes detected the well-worn marks by which the lads ascended and descended-little interstices between the bricks, whence the mortar had fallen or had been

picked away. Jim rapidly climbed up first, and then by the aid of a stick which he held down for me, I too made my ascent, and at length stood upon the stone coping or parapet which ran along the side.

There, exposed upon the dome-shaped roof, with their heads upon the higher part, and their feet somewhat in the gutter, but in a great variety of postures-some coiled up, as one may have seen dogs before a fire; some huddled two or three together, others more apart-lay eleven boys cut on the open roof. No covering of any kind was upon them. The rags apparently quite as bad as, if not even worse than, Jim's. One that most of them wore were mere apologies for clothes, big fellow who lay there seemed to be about eighteen years old; but the ages of the remainder varied, I should say, from nine to fourteen. Just then the moon shone clearly out. I have already said it was a bitterly cold, dry night, and, as the pale light of the moon fell upon the upturned faces of those poor boys, and as I, standing there, realised, for one awful moment, the terrible fact that they were all absolutely homeless and destitute, and were perhaps but samples of numbers of others, it seemed as though the hand of God Himself had suddenly pulled aside the curtain which concealed from my view the untold miseries of forlorn child-life upon the streets of London. Add to this that a passionate sense of the unfairness of things flooded my heart and mind as I stood that night upon the roof top. Why should these eleven have nothing, and I and countless others have all we needed? It all seemed so unfair, so wrong, the problem was so mixed. I was fairly dazed at the thought of it, and only found relief when I gave up trying to solve it and thought I must do just the one duty that lay so manifestly at my doorsave this one poor lad, whatever might come of it.

Jim looked at the whole thing from a very matter-of-fact point of view.

"Shall I wake 'em, sir?" he asked.

"Hush," said I, "don't let us attempt to disturb them," and as one of them moved uneasily I hurried away.

Reaching the street, Jim, blithely unconscious of any reason for special emotion on the subject, said: "Shall we go to another lay, sir? There's lots more!"

But the doctor had seen enough to know that the Don'tLive-Nowheres existed, and to realise how they existed and where they slept.

IV. THE FIRST HOME.

The sight of these upturned piteous faces on the iron roof of that shed, glimmering wan through their

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A GROUP IN THE DAY NURSERY AT BABIES' CASTLE.

dirt in the wintry moonlight, haunted Barnardo. Silently and before God he vowed to dedicate himself henceforth, while life lasted, to save the Arabs of the Streets. The Chinese must seek other missioners; his work lay nearer home. But what could be done, and how could he do it? It seemed indeed a forlorn enough task. But the seed had been sown, and the Sower who could employ Jim Jervis as His messenger could provide for the rest. Speaking of this long afterwards, Dr. Barnardo said:

I knew no one then who could render me any help in the rescue and care of these boys. I was, comparatively speaking, friendless and unknown in London myself; but our heavenly Father, who feeds the hungry ravens, and whose open hand supplies the young lions when they roar, heard the prayer of my heart, and gradually the way opened to accomplish the work I had set before me. I asked Him, if it was His holy will, to permit me to provide a shelter for such poor children, and to give me the wisdom needed to seek them out during the hours of darkness, and to bring them in to learn of God, of Christ, of heaven.

The answer was not long in coming. Some weeks afterwards, Barnardo was at dinner at a great man's house, and opportunity occurring he spoke warmly of what he had seen and knew. For he had then seen other "lays," and he knew of what he spoke. His host and his fellow guests were incredulous. "Do you mean to tell us that this very night," they said, "raw and cold and wretched as it is, there are children sleeping out in the open air in London? "I do," said Barnardo. "Can you show us them?" he was asked. Albeit somewhat shrinking lest the "lay" might that night be drawn blank, he stoutly declared he could and he would. So cabs were summoned, and a score of gentlemen in evening dress fared forth towards Slumdom piloted by Barnardo. Through the city they drove on and on and on, until they reached a space by Billingsgate Market, where he knew the lads slept by the score.

For a

A strange sight it was, that of these West-end revellers straying to Billingsgate seeking outcasts-and finding none. For there was not a boy to be seen. moment Barnardo's heart sank within him; but a policeman standing by told him it was all right. "They'll come out," he said, "if you give them a copper."

A halfpenny a head was offered, and then from out a great confused pile of old crates, boxes, and empty barrels which were piled together, covered with a huge tarpaulin, seventy-three boys crawled out from the lair where they had been seeking a shelter for the night. Called ont by the offer of a halfpenny, there they stood, beneath the light of the lamps, a sorrowful and mournful regiment of the great army of the destitute, confronting an even more sorrowful and mournful regiment of the well-to-do. "I pray God," said Dr. Barnardo, “ that I may never again behold such a sight." But it was a vision which, although apocalyptic in its horror, carried with it a glad promise of better things to come. For Lord Shaftesbury was of the party, and with him were many of the best philanthropists in London.

After thus having proved his case Dr. Barnardo was not long in getting to his life-work. He says:

As may well be imagined, I began in a very small way. A little house in a mean street was first opened for some twentyfive boys. We did the repairs ourselves. Many a happy hour was spent in whitewashing the walls and ceilings, scrubbing the floors, and otherwise putting what seemed to me at that time a veritable mansion for capaciousness into suitable condition for the reception of my first family. Then I spent two whole nights upon the streets of London, cast my net upon the “right side of the ship," and brought to shore twenty-five

homeless lads, all willing and eager to accept such help as I could give them.

Thus had Jim's message from the Lord borne the fruit whereto it was appointed. Dr. Barnardo had found his Vocation. The Home was born. The little one has now become a thousand, and in place of twenty-five homeless boys he has now 5,000 boys and girls in his Homes. But although Dr. Barnardo has been the cultivator of the crop from which this great harvest has been reaped, the message from the Lord came by little Jim-little Jim Jervis, the first of a procession of more than 30,000 of the Don't-Live-Nowheres who, thanks to his message, have been homed and saved.

PART II.-FROM TRIALS TO TRIUMPH.

I. THE MESSENGER FROM SATAN.

Now I must make a leap of thirty years, and come down to the present day to meet the thought of many who on reading the foregoing pages will ask themselves, "But is there not something wrong about Barnardo? We have got an idea that Labby has his knife into him somewhere." So, discarding all chronological order, and leaping at once to the point, I will say a few words in passing on this question.

There is not a kinder-hearted man anywhere in London than Mr. Henry Labouchere, proprietor of Truth, unless it be Mr. Horace Voules, editor of the same flourishing weekly journal. It is to their thoughtful care that the little ones in the London hospitals and workhouses have their Christmas gifts, and this is but one of numberless benefactions of which the public hears little. For many years past they have worked together in the production of Truth, and no one who is familiar with the career of that journal can deny that their influence has been, on the whole, an influence for good and not for evil. We may detest the politics of Little England and the journalism of the back stairs, but with all these drawbacks Truth has exercised a clarifying influence on English politics, finance and social life. "Labby," as he is almost lovingly called by multitudes who have never seen him, has risked much and spent immense sums in exposing frauds, in denouncing swindlers, and in showing up impostors. In all this he has had a most competent and indefatigable lieutenant in Horace Voules, upon whom indeed there has, from the first, fallen far the greater proportion of the journalistic work of Truth."

Now it is a curious thing that both men, who are by way of journalistic profession the most advanced Radicals in England, have in them a curious vein of oldfashioned Conservatism. They stand in the ancient ways and distrust a new society or a new philanthropist almost in the fashion of those natives who heave half bricks at strangers who trespass within the boundaries of their village. Familiarised with imposture, these detectives of journalism are prone to scent imposture everywhere, and whenever by any unfortunate accident the new comer treads on their corns, they are apt to be a trifle indiscriminate in their attack. But they are honest men-men who are fathers each of one dearly loved child, and they have the courage and the candour to. change their course when they can be induced to open their eyes to the facts which prjudice, tradition, or sheer cussedness, of which both have a fair share, have concealed from their view. They used to tomahawk General Booth and the Salvation Army. Now there is not a more useful backer of the Salvationists in all London than the editor of Truth. It is not so many years ago since they scalped Benjamin Waugh. But

to day the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has no firmer friends than Mr. Labouchere and Mr. Voules. And knowing all three men as I do, I have not the slightest hesitation in predicting that before long Truth will discover Dr. Barnardo to be what he is, and recognise his work to be one of the best things achieved in our time.

To effect this transformation what is necessary? Only one thing. That the good gentlemen who in their shady retreats at Twickenham and at Brighton prepare or sanction smashing articles intended to roast Barnardo, should spend one hot July day seeing the actual work that Dr. Barnardo is doing for the destitute children.

Mr. Labouchere expends on his daughter, Mr. Voules on his son, the wealth of loving fatherhool which is quite enough to enable them to sympathise and understand the paternal love which enables Dr. Barnardo to care for five thousand of nobody's children whom he has saved from the gutter. The work is there. It speaks for itself. Every one of these five thousand small children is an epistle that can be known and read of all men. And one day among them all would change the whole tone of Truth's references to Dr. Barnardo.

66

'Ignorance, blank ignorance" -Dr. Johnson's excuse for making a mistake in defining pastern in his dictionary-is no doubt the excuse they would make after the first hour's actual contact with the real work that is going on at Stepney. And as they pictured to themselves their own bairns, sweltering and hungry, maltreated and homeless as these other bairns were, and would have been but for Dr. Barnardo, they would change front with the thoroughness and courage which distinguish them.

It is odd but true that the same virus which wrecked the Education Bill lies latent in our contemporary's criticisms. But while it is natural for Lord Salisbury to fall a prey to the

Barnard is mentioned. But both of the bigoted combatants are more to be admired than the humanitarian secularist who allows his sympathies with suffering children to be altogether dulled or annulled by his indiguation at the pother that the rival sectarians are making about one or two stray children.

Dr. Barnardo in the course of thirty years has rescued some 30,000 destitute children from a life of misery, vice, and crime. Out of these 30,000 it is alleged that he has in three or possibly four cases at the outside brought up as a Protestant a little child born of Catholic parents who, if he had not interfered, would have gone to the devil by the broad rod of drink, beggary and vice. Now I am quite willing to a lmit for the sake of argument that Dr. Barnardo was utterly wrong in all these four cases, and that he ought to have allowed the little Catholic waif an i

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PLAY-ROOM IN A COTTAGE IN THE GIRLS' VILLAGE HOME.

bigots of denominationalism, it is odd to find Mr. Labouchere ensnared by the priests. Dr. Barnardo has, perhaps, a bee in his bonnet about the Pope, and the Papists repay him by keeping a whole hive of bees in their heads which, when he is mentioned, buzz and sting until all chance of reason and argument is quite impossible. If the subject-matter be regarded from the serene altitude of Laboucherian philosophy, nothing can be more ludicrous, if it were not so pathetic, than the spectacle of these Protestants and Papists wasting time and money in vain disputes over a unit, while a thousand perish with no one caring for their souls or their bodies. But narrow-minded people must act according to their lights, and broad-minded men should make the necessary allowance for their weaknesses and limitations.

For my part I have no more sympathy with Dr. Barnardo's prejudice against the Pope than I have with the frantic panic into which many Papists fall when Dr.

stray to go to the devil its own road. Let us admit that it was utterly abominable of him to try to save a Catholic's child which, so far as he was concerned, ought to have been left to suffer cold, privation, nakedness, and misery. All that I would urge in mitigation of his offence is that the mere writing out in plain English of the rule which a regard for his own interest would prompt him to pursue, creates a shudder which, if I feel it who have no anti-papal prejudices, must be felt much more keenly by Dr. Barnardo.

Still even if we admit it all at its worst, what are three or four among thirty thousand? Is it not difficult to conceive any sane, sensible, secular-minded men allowing a wrangle about three to blind them to the service rendered in saving 30,193 about whom there is no dispute? What should be recognised by all of us surely is that men like Dr. Barnardo have the faults of their qualities, the vices of their virtues. Archangels do not exist even in the office of Truth. What we have to do is

to strike a balance. Granted that Dr. Barnardo is perhaps hipped about the Catholics. Granted that he must have his knuckles rapped whenever he does any good to any child of Catholic birth; still, after all that is said and done, there remains an overwhelming surplus of good works which in duty and in honour bound as friends of little children the proprietor and editor of Truth will yet come to recognise.

But meantime Mr. Labouchere and Mr. Voules fulfil their appointed mission. For as the Apostle Paul was

II. TO THE LAW AND THE TESTIMONY.

As to the infinitely trivial quarrels between the Papists and anti-Papists over building sites or individu ul infants, I shall best observe the laws of historical perspective by saying nothing. For even if I grant that it is possible that in every single case in which disputes have arisen Dr. Barnardo was in the wrong, as the cases of dispute. are to the cases not in dispute as 30,193 to six, the rule of three is good enough for me to settle the question as to where our sympathies ought to lie.

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AT SERVICE IN THE CHILDREN'S CHURCH AT THE GIRLS' VILLAGE HOME. plagued with a sore trouble from which he could not free himself, so Dr. Barnardo has Truth as a thorn in the flesh. The old Scripture text applies not inaptly, "And lest I should be exalted above measure there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the Messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted beyond measure." For this thing also, no doubt, Dr. Barnardo besought the Lord, not only three, but many times, that it might depart from him. Hitherto that prayer has not been answered. But for the sake of my friends of Truth I wish they would tire of the somewhat unworthy rôle in which they have persisted so long.

Dr. Barnardo has dealt in thirty years with 30,000 children, or, to put it roughly, an average of 1,000 per annum. He has been assailed in eighty-eight of these cases, chiefly on account of the protection he has afforded to the children of Roman Catholics. None of these children had been admitted until after the Catholic priests concerned had refused to do anything for the little ones. In seventy-six of the eighty-eight cases the procce lings were stopped in their initial stage by the discovery that the action of Dr. Barnardo was fully covered by the provisions of the Custody of Children's Act, a measure which was passed

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