ive friend and dispute the point. We refuse flatly
to enter into a discussion of the subject.

Look at that little boy sleeping there under the railway arch in the
East End of London--not the boy with the black hair and the hook nose
and the square under-jaw, but the one with the curly head, the extremely
dirty face, and the dimpled chin, on the tip of whose snub nose the
rising sun shines with a power that causes it to resemble a glowing
carbuncle on a visage still lying in shadow.

That little boy's disposition is sweet. You can see it in every line,
in every curve, in every dimple of his dirty little face. He has not
been sweetened by training, he has had no training--at least none from
man or woman with a view to his good. He has no settled principles of
any kind, good or bad. All his actions are the result of impulse based
on mere animal propensity, but, like every other human being, he has a
conscience. At the time of his introduction to the reader his
conscience is, like himself, asleep, and it has not as yet been much
enlightened. His name is Stumpy, but he was never christened.

Critical minds will object here that a boy would not be permitted to
sleep under a railway arch, and that London houses would effectually
prevent the rising sun from entering such a place. To which we reply
that the arch in question was a semi-suburban arch; that it was the
last, (or the first), of a series of arches, an insignificant arch under
which nothing ever ran except stray cats and rats, and that it spanned a
morsel of waste ground which gave upon a shabby street running due east,
up which, every fine morning, the rising sun gushed in a flood of glory.

Each fleeting moment increased the light on Stumpy's upturned nose,
until it tipped the dimpled chin and cheeks and at last kissed his
eyelids. This appeared to suggest pleasant dreams, for the boy smiled
like a dirty-faced angel. He even gave vent to an imbecile laugh, and
then awoke.

Stumpy's eyes were huge and blue. The opening of them was like the
revealing of unfathomable sky through clouds of roseate hue! They
sparkled with a light all their own in addition to that of the sun, for
there was in them a gleam of mischief as their owner poked his companion
in the ribs and then tugged his hair.

"I say, you let me alone!" growled the companion, turning uneasily on
his hard couch.

"I say, you get up," answered Stumpy, giving the companion a pinch on
the tend