m to withdraw that gaze, and
look contentedly into the face of evil.

I am now pleading for the gifted boys and girls of the underworld, not
the weaklings, for of them I speak elsewhere. But I will say, that while
the weaklings are the more hopeless, it is the talented that are the
most dangerous. Let us see to it that their powers have some chance of
developing in a right direction. When by some extraordinary concurrence
of circumstances a Council School boy passes on to a university and
takes a good degree, it is chronicled all over the world; the school,
the teacher, the boy and his parents are all held up for show and
admiration. I declare it makes me ill! Why? Because I know that in the
underworld thousands of men are grubbing, burrowing and grovelling who,
as boys, possessed phenomenal abilities, but whose parents were poor, so
poor that their gifted children had no chance of developing the talent
that was in them. Let us give them a chance! Sometimes here and there
one and another bursts his bonds, and, rejoicing in his freedom, does
brilliant things. But in spite of Samuel Smiles and his self-help they
are but few, though, if the centuries are searched, the catalogue will
be impressive enough.

Of course there must be self-help. But there must be opportunity also.
There is a great deal of talk about the children of the poor being
"over-educated," and the delinquencies of the youthful poor are
attributed to this bogy. It is because they are under-educated, not
over-educated, that the children of the very poor so often go wrong.

But the attempt to cast them all in the same mould is disastrous; there
is an over-education going on in this direction. Not all the children of
the poor can be great scholars, but some of them can! Let us give them a
chance. Not all of them can be scientists and engineers, etc., but some
of them have talents for such things! Give them a chance! A good many of
them have unmistakably artistic gifts! Why not give them a chance too!
And the mechanically inclined should have a chance! Why can we not
differentiate according to their tastes and gifts?

For even then we shall have enough left to be our hewers of wood and
carriers of water; an abundance will remain to do all the work that
requires neither brains nor gifts.

But let us stop at once and for ever trying to cram thick heads and poor
brains with stuff that cannot possibly be appreciated or understood. Let
us teach their mechanica