Part 45 (1/2)

”When it cohted down in the court, and they show up here quite bright--alht Don't they, Toht”

The hearts must be hard that are not moved to a deeper and more practical interest in the children of the poor by this pathetic story, and others of a kindred character which dickens told over and over again for the Christian world to study And the study led to feeling and thought and co-operative action

The fruits of these wonderful stories are the splendid hoanizations for children, and the laws to protect them from cruelty by parents or teachers, or employers, and the free public schools to educate the the place of the sorrow, and tears, and coercion of the tiic story of poor Jo illustrated the poverty, the ignorance, the destitution, the hopelessness, the barrenness, and the dreadful environment of a London street boy The world has done much better since, as dickens prophesied it would do, and the good work is going on Hundreds of thousands of the poor Joes of London are now in the public schools of London alone of whoht little till dickens told his stories

In nobody's Story dickens returns to his special purpose of changing the attitude of civilization toward the education of the poor The Bigwigs represent society, and ”thefa what it was lawful to teach to thisbeing pris; and others of the fa pri family, rent into factions, wrote paes, orations, and all varieties of discourses; impounded one another in courts Lay and courts Ecclesiastical; threw dirt, exchanged puible ani snatches at his fireside, saw the denorance arise there, and take his children to itself He saw his daughter perverted into a heavy slatternly drudge; he saw his son godown the ways of low sensuality, to brutality and crience in the eyes of his babies so changing into cunning and suspicion, that he could have rather wished them idiots

dickens objected to a certain kind of sentimentality exhibited in his day toward criestive picture full of eleical study in David Copperfield, in which he makes the brutal schoolistrate, with an unfailing syste the wickedest scoundrels into thesaints by solitary confinement dickens did not approve of the syste of so s for criminals, while the honest poor were in hovels, and especially while the state allowed the boys and girls, through neglect, to be transformed into criminals by thousands every year

dickens would have ed the establishirls of the streets, so that they ent, self-reliant, law-abiding citizens instead of criminals

David said:

Traddles and I repaired to the prison where Mr Creakle was powerful

It was an i, erected at a vast expense I could not help thinking, as we approached the gate, what an uproar would have been made in the country if any deluded man had proposed to spend one half the money it had cost, on the erection of an industrial school for the young, or a house of refuge for the deserving old

As usual with great reformers, the philanthropists of his own day refused to accept the theories of dickens, but succeeding generations adopted thean to be practised so soon because he winged his thought with living appeals to the deepest, truest feelings of the hue:

”The absence of the soul is farits noblest poanting”

He pleaded again for those who are weak-minded in Mr dick's case in David Copperfield Mr dick was evidently introduced into the story to show the effect of kind treatment on those who are defective in intellect The insane were flogged and put in strait-jackets in the ti is now the practice of the civilized world The insane are kindly treated, and weak-ood schools by the best teachers that can be obtained for them

Betsy Trotwood, David's aunt, was an eood heart united with an eion, as did the Murdstones, but she showed her religious life in good, reasonable, self-sacrificing, helpful living David asked her for an explanation of Mr dick's case

”He has been _called_he has been called mad, or I should not have had the benefit of his society and advice for these last ten years and upward--in fact, ever since your sister, Betsy Trotwood, disappointedas that?” I said

”And nice people they were, who had the audacity to call him mad,”

pursued my aunt ”Mr dick is a sort of distant connection of mine--it doesn't matter how; I needn't enter into that If it hadn't been for me, his own brother would have shut him up for life That's all”

I a that ly on the subject, I tried to look as if I felt strongly too

”A proud fool!” said h he is not half so eccentric as a good many people--he didn't like to have him visible about the house, and sent hih he had been left to his particular care by their deceased father, who thought him almost a natural And a wise man _he_ ain, as my aunt looked quite convinced, I endeavoured to look quite convinced also

”So I stepped in,” said my aunt, ”and reat deal more sane than you are, or ever will be, it is to be hoped Let him have his little income, and come and live with me _I_ am not afraid of him; _I_ am not proud; _I_ am ready to take care of him, and shall not ill treat him as soood deal of squabbling,” said ot him; and he has been here ever since He is the most friendly and amenable creature in existence; and as for advice!--but nobody knohat that reatly delighted with the asyluly advocated the adoption in England of A the insane He says, in American Notes:

At South Boston, as it is called, in a situation excellently adapted for the purpose, several charitable institutions are clustered together One of these is the State Hospital for the Insane; adhtened principles of conciliation and kindness, which twenty years ago would have been worse than heretical, and which have been acted upon with so much success in our own pauper asylum at Hanwell ”Evince a desire to show some confidence, and repose some trust, even inthe galleries, his patients flocking round us unrestrained Of those who deny or doubt the wisdo its effects, if there be such people still alive, I can only say that I hope I may never be summoned as a juryman on a commission of lunacy whereof they are the subjects; for I should certainly find them out of their senses, on such evidence alone

Each ward in this institution is shaped like a long gallery or hall, with the dor from it on either hand