Come! help us, answer the message
Now pealing across the seas—
"A home and a hearty welcome
For hundreds such as these!"
It comes from broad Ontario,
And from Nova Scotia's shore;
They have loved and sheltered our gathered waifs,
They have room for thousands more.
S. R. GELDARD.
CHAPTER IX.
Questions and Answers—Sorrowful Cases—Testimonies from those who have visited Canada—Stewardship.
The fallowing plain answers to practical questions, are written by those well acquainted with the work:—
I. "Are these children really street Arabs? If not, where do you find so many?"
In the early days of the work, before the establishment of School Boards and kindred institutions, a large proportion of the children were actually taken from the streets. Now, the rescue work begins farther back, and seeks to get hold of the little ones before they hare had a taste of street life and become contaminated. A policeman brings one sometimes, having found it in a low lodging-house, forsaken by its worthless, drunken parents. Christian ladies are ever on the look-out for the little ones in their work among the poor, and many a child has been taken straight from the dying bed of its only remaining parent to Miss Macpherson. "Rescued from a workhouse life" might be written on many a bright little brow, and "saved from drink" on many more. Poor, delicate widows, striving vainly to keep a large, young family, have often proved their true, unselfish love by giving up one or two to Miss Macpherson to be taken to Canada. Such are encouraged always to write to and keep in loving memory the dear toiling mother at home. Widowed fathers in ill-health, and short of work, feeling their utter helplessness to do for their motherless flock, have come to Miss Macpherson entreating her to take care of some of them.
2. "How come the Canadian farmers to be willing to take these children?"
From a business point of view this is quite easily explained. Labour is so scarce out there, and hired help so dear, while food is so plentiful, that the Canadian farmer finds it quite worth his while to take a little boy from the old country, whom he can train and teach as his own, and who very soon will repay him in quick ability for farm labour.