ENDED IN HIS DEATH
a few weeks ago. Another lies suffering in the hospital at the present time from the same cause. In spite of all this, many of these boys prefer to sleep on the street rather than be subjected to any restraint.
Some of them have a roving disposition, and take periodical excursions to other cities in Canada and the United States. I know some who have more than once visited Chicago. One boy’s father told me that he came from England to Canada simply because in the Old Country he found it impossible to keep his thirteen-year-old son at home. The lad hadn’t been long in Toronto before he ran away, got aboard the train, and stole away to Montreal, from there he went to Quebec, and thence to Chicago. His father is now living in the neighborhood of Lambton Mills. He doesn’t know where his truant boy is, and has given up all hope of ever getting him back home again.
I could go on for an indefinite length of time, giving incidents in the lives of Toronto street arabs. The examples I have cited will be sufficient, however, to enlighten those who have never troubled themselves to inquire into the circumstances of these children of adversity to whom the lines have not fallen in pleasant places.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE HOSPITAL.
That a good deal of the ailing and suffering endured by humanity is superinduced by vicious habits of one kind or another is a pretty well ascertained fact. The staff of the General hospital could inform you that many of the “cases” who pass through their hands owe their debilitated or broken frames to excess or neglect of one kind or another. The General hospital, therefore, is, as well as the jail, an institution which the battered and enfeebled sinner resorts to when he can no longer stand up against the world’s buffets. You will find them there, the children of slothfulness and inebriety. Charity refuses to condemn them for faults which have their root in that weakness which is to a greater or lesser degree inherent in our common humanity. She has declared that their wounds must be healed, their quivering nerves steadied and their wasting vitality in general restored. This is done at the general hospital without money and without price. As many as are able to pay their way do so, but lack of this world’s goods does not preclude ailing mortality from shelter, food, medicine and healing.
The fretfulness of people who are ailing is well known, and every once in a while one hears of