3. "Are you sure the children are really better off there?"
Every boy in Canada has before him a definite hope for the future. If he be steady, industrious, and of average intelligence, he may reasonably look to being independent some day, to owning land of his own, and attaining an honourable position in Canada. People do not amass fortunes there as a rule, but they may all live in comfort and plenty, and what they have is their own. Surely this is a brighter prospect than the ceaseless round of toil at desk or counter, in which so many in England,—even the more fortunate,—spend their youth helping to make rich men richer.
4. "Among the hundreds are there not some failures, some exceptions? What becomes of them?"
Yes, there are disappointments and failures in this work as well as in every other. We do not take little angels to Canada, but very human little boys and girls with every variety of temper and character, and sometimes hereditary disadvantages which it is hard to battle with. But patient forbearance and gentle treatment and time do so much for them. And often a kind farmer has asked to be allowed to keep, and "try again" the wilful little fellow who has tried to run away or proved tiresome to manage.
"Ninety-eight per cent, of our children do well, and for the two per cent, we do the best we can. If any circumstance arises making it desirable for a farmer to give up a boy, he is at once returned to the Home, where he is received and kept until another more suitable place is found for him."
Should any be still blinded to the blessings of emigration for the young, surely their eyes will be opened on reading the following facts as related by Miss Macpherson:—
"William and Mary were brother and sister living in a terrible warren near Drury Lane. The boy's employment was to gather rags and bones. Their parents had been buried by the workhouse. Their condition was too deplorable to be described. A year's training was not lost upon this sister and brother. They came to Canada in 1873. Now, could yon see them at nineteen and twenty-two—able to read and write, well-clothed with their own honest earnings, having saved, in 1877, one hundred dollars; and this year, 1879, William is having $100 as wages, and Mary $60. They come from time to time to visit the Home. William is thinking of having a farm of his own.
"A. B.—Who was he? The son of a drunken woman, who, when very tipsy still comes in from Ratcliff Highway to abuse us at Spitalfields. Alfred has been many years in a lawyer's family, and has saved enough money to be apprenticed as an engineer. He was a wise boy to be guided by the kind counsel of those he served. We are not satisfied with earthly adoptions only; we continue to pray that each one may be adopted into the family of those who are washed in the blood of the Lamb.
"Well do we remember the winter, when a wild man from Seven Dials discovered that we had the little Annie, of whom he used to make such traffic in the gin palaces; though we had no right to her. The lamb was but six years old. Thank God, an ocean separates her from his drunken villanies. Now she is with kind-hearted, homely people, the companion and playmate of their daughter.
"S. W., seven years old; so puny—only a few pounds weight—owing to her being starved and beaten by a drunken stepfather. Now, a year in a happy home, going to school regularly, is companion to an only child, and lacks no earthly comfort. The poor mother was ill-used in the dens where she lived by her neighbours, for having, they said, sold her child. We received a photograph of the little one from her happy Canadian home; this closed every mouth, for it could not be gainsaid.