“What has made that difference?” said the gentleman, laying his hand on the shoulder of his beautiful boy. “I questioned that unhappy child. I found him ignorant of the first principles of virtue. His mother is dead, his father in jail; if he has learnt anything from those around him it is only a knowledge of vice. Pinched by hunger, homeless, friendless, ignorant even that he has a soul, it would be a miracle indeed if he followed the straight path of which he has not so much as heard! What can we expect him to be but a thief,—what would you have been in his place?”
Neddy looked thoughtful and was silent. Then raising his blue eyes to his father’s face he said, “And what did you do to the boy?”
“I first tried to relieve a little his pressing bodily wants; to take from him, at least for one day, the temptation to commit a theft. But I knew that the temptation would recur again, and as long as he continued in blind ignorance, there could be small hope that he would even wish to resist it. I remembered that my watchmaker had given me the direction of a Ragged School at which his daughter taught; spending her time and energies as so many do now, in this noblest labour of love. This school was not very far off, and I resolved to take this opportunity of paying it a long-intended visit. I took the poor little fellow with me, and spoke to the superintendent, who readily agreed to receive him. He will there learn some way to earn his bread honestly; he will be taught to know right from wrong; he will hear, perhaps for the first time, the voice of kindness; and he may yet live to be respectable, useful, and happy.”
“Oh! papa, do you think that after once being a thief he is ever likely to turn out good for anything!”
“The experiment has been tried over and over again, Neddy, and many times it has been mercifully attended with success. The idle have become industrious, the thieves honest, the vicious been reclaimed, the lost found and saved! I will tell you a striking occurrence which really took place in a reformatory for thieves. Not one of the inmates there but had broken the laws of his country, and committed the crime of theft. But mercy was giving them a chance to redeem the characters which they had lost, and they were learning various trades, by which to support themselves in honest independence. A subscription, as you may remember, was raised at the time of the war with Russia, to help the widows and orphans of our gallant soldiers. From the Sovereign on her throne, to the labourer in the field, from rich and poor, high and low, contributions to the Patriotic Fund poured in.
“The thieves in the reformatory heard of the subscription; they longed to aid it, but what could they do? they had no money, they owed their very bread to charity, for they had not yet acquired sufficient skill in the trades which they were learning, to pay even their necessary expenses.”
“They could not give what they had not got, papa, if they wished to be generous ever so much.”
“Where there is a will there is a way, Neddy. These poor fellows were so anxious to help the widow and the orphan, that they asked and obtained leave to go a whole day without food, that the money so saved upon them might be paid into the Patriotic Fund.”
“And did they really starve a whole day?—have neither breakfast, nor dinner, nor supper,—and all go hungry to bed?”
“They did, Neddy, all the thieves in that reformatory[2] did; and I doubt if amongst the hundreds of thousands of subscriptions to the Patriotic Fund, any showed so much real generosity and self-denial as the contribution of the reformed thieves!”