me, peculiarly severe about Lambeth and
Battersea Fields, where many of the candlemakers lived. Mr Wilson's
first thought was for the young people in the factory. He consulted
with his brother, and they took additional counsel of first-rate
medical men, and then added to the committee a Mr Symes, a gentleman
holding a field that was waiting to be built on. The result of these
consultations was, that Mr Symes giving them temporary possession of
the field, the night-school was closed entirely, and all the boys set
to work to learn cricket--cricket as the best antidote to cholera the
directors of Price's Patent could devise. Wise men these directors,
with some sterling common sense and rare old hearty benevolence mixed
up with their generous Saxon blood! Mr Symes was not the only
stranger--for stranger he was--eager to help the directors. A Mr
Graham came forward, and many others joined in offering; and
altogether, as Mr J. P. Wilson says, 'everybody's heart seemed to warm
up to their object.' The plan was a success. Of the whole crowd of
cricket-players, only one, an interesting lad of seventeen, was lost,
though most of them had kinspeople dying and dead in their own homes.
That cricket-ground was not, however, useful only for physical health;
it presented a beautiful and striking scene, which must have carried
home to every heart deep thoughts and holy purposes to strengthen the
soul as well.

'Always when the game was finished,' says Mr Wilson, 'they (the boys)
collected in a corner of the field, and took off their caps for a very
short prayer for the safety of themselves and their friends from
cholera; and the tone in which they said their amen to this, has
always made me think, that although the school was nominally given up
for the time, they were really getting from their game, so concluded,
more moral benefit than any ordinary schooling could have given them.'
This belief we heartily endorse. That informal prayer, made while the
blood was warm with happiness and high with health, spoken in the open
field, by themselves, direct to Heaven, without other interpreter
between them, must have made a deep impression on the boys. Its very
informality must have added to its solemnity; making it appear, and
indeed making it in reality, so much more the genuine, spontaneous,
heart-spoken expression of each individual, than the mere customary
attendance on a prescribed form can admit. A field of six and a half
acres is now r