He not only gave his time, but his money too; and oftentimes, though the eldest son of an earl, and later an earl himself, he hardly knew where to turn for the means to keep his schemes going.
One day a lady called on him, and, telling a piteous tale of a Polish refugee, asked him for help. Lord Shaftesbury had to confess he had no money he could give; then he suddenly remembered he had five pounds in the library: he fetched the bank note, which formed his nest egg, and presented it to her.
One of Lord Shaftesbury's greatest works was the promotion of ragged schools.
To these schools, established in the poorest neighbourhoods of the metropolis, came the street arabs, the poor and abandoned, and received kindness and teaching, which comforted and civilised them. The outcasts who slept in doorways, under arches, and in all kinds of horrible and unhealthy places, were the objects of this good man's care; and ways were found of benefiting and starting afresh hundreds of lads who would otherwise have become thieves or vagabonds in the great city.
When he was over eighty years old he was still striving for the good of others. So much was his heart in the work that he remarked on one occasion: "When I feel age creeping on me, and know I must soon die—I hope it is not wrong to say it—but I cannot bear to leave the world with all the misery in it".
The dawn came for him in October, 1885, when in his eighty-fifth year this veteran leader was called to his rest.
For convenience I have spoken of him throughout as Lord Shaftesbury; but it may be well to mention that till he was fifty years old he was known as Lord Ashley. Through the death of his father he became Earl of Shaftesbury in 1851.
A STATESMAN WHO HAD NO ENEMIES.
THE STORY OF W.H. SMITH.
It is always well to remember that the man who serves his country as a good citizen, as a soldier, as a statesman, or in any other walk of life, deserves our admiration as much as the missionary or the minister of the Gospel—each and all such are servants of the great King.