different feelings
towards the Evil Brigade.

XIII.

WAIFS AND STRAYS.

When I talked[2] of the hopeless poor and of degraded men, I had in my
mind only the feeble or detestable adults who degrade our
civilisation; but I have by no means forgotten the unhappy little
souls who develop into wastrels unless they are taken away from
hideous surroundings which cramp vitality, destroy all childish
happiness, and turn into brutes poor young creatures who bear the
human image. Lately I heard one or two little stories which are
amongst the most pathetic that ever came before me in the course of
some small experience of life among the forsaken classes--or rather
let me say, the classes that used to be forsaken. These little stories
have prompted me to endeavour to deal carefully with a matter which
has cost me many sad thoughts.

[2] Essay XII.

A stray child was rescued from the streets by a society which is
extending its operations very rapidly, and the little creature was
placed as a boarder with a cottager in the country. To the utter
amazement of the good rustic folk, their queer little guest showed
complete ignorance of the commonest plants and animals; she had never
seen any pretty thing, and she was quite used to being hungry and to
satisfying her appetite with scraps of garbage. When she first saw a
daisy on the green, she gazed longingly, and then asked plaintively,
"Please, might I touch that?" When she was told that she might pluck a
few daisies she was much delighted. After her first experiences in the
botanising line she formally asked permission to pluck many wild
flowers; but she always seemed to have a dread of transgressing
against some dim law which had been hitherto represented to her mind
by the man in blue who used to watch over her miserable alley. Before
she became accustomed to receiving food at regular intervals, she
fairly touched the hearts of her foster-parents by one queer request.
The housewife was washing some Brussels sprouts, when the little stray
said timidly, "Please, may I eat a bit of that stalk?" Of course the
stringy mass was uneatable; but it turned out that the forlorn child
had been very glad to worry at the stalks from the gutter as a dog
does at an unclean bone. Another little girl was taken from the den
which she knew as home, after her parents had been sent to prison for
treating her with unspeakable cruelty. The matron of the country home
found that the child's