The opposite house, the door of which was closed upon the Missionary at his first visit, was known to leading members of the cadging fraternity as an "easy padding ken," which means "a quiet lodging-house for begging impostors." As these rogues only stayed a short time, to conceal themselves from the police or to prepare new deceits for their country friends, a rapid succession of them was met with, from the "shallow cove" (i.e., a pretended sailor in distress), to the "highflier" (i.e., a begging-letter impostor). The gipsy man and his wife who kept the den professed to be very fond of the tracts, but a man who did the "religious dodge" told the giver that they were saved up and sold to such as himself at twopence a dozen, for village and roadside begging. The landlord got into trouble with the police, and to put them off the scent he for several months let the upper rooms in the regular way. This accounts for the circumstance that the visitor did not know that the top back had been occupied by a family for five or six weeks. Thinking that lodgers were there, he, one dark November afternoon, made his way to that part of the house. In reply to his knock, the door was opened by a woman who was partly intoxicated, and, whose appearance denoted that she sifted upon the dust-heaps. She refused the tract which was offered upon the ground that "it was no good to eat;" but when told of the "true Bread," she opened the door wider, and looking toward a bundle of rags, said, "You can talk to my girl as is very bad, as I'm going out," and then she staggered downstairs.
The visitor approached the rags, upon which lay a little girl of eleven years. She partly raised herself, as if to look at the stranger, and then sunk back as though exhausted with the effort. "I have come to talk to you about Jesus, and to pray with you," said the Missionary, taking hold of her emaciated hand, and then he paused to give the little sufferer time to recover from the excitement of his presence, and to glance round the room. It was a wretched dwelling; filthy in the extreme; with scarcely a vestige of furniture, unless the two boxes which served for seats, and the planks placed across pieces of wood, which served for a table, could be dignified by that name. In one corner was a pile of old kettles without spouts, and saucepans without handles and lids. In the fireplace, which was without a fender and filled with ashes, was a tinker's hand-fire—a saucepan with round holes at the side and wire handle. In different parts of the room were little heaps of dirty rags, bottles, and greasepots. All this showed that the occupant was a travelling tinker, who had been stopped on his travels by the illness of the child, and that his wife had obtained work upon a dust-heap, from which she brought worn-out tinware for her husband to "doctor up" and re-sell to the poor. Turning toward the child, the visitor inquired how long she had lived there, and if she could say the Lord's Prayer. In reply, the child, panting at intervals for breath, in a low, hollow tone, said, "For four or five Sundays, sir, I was ill, and we had to sleep under a hedge, which made me worse; and then we tramped on here, and the doctor has been to see me, and says he can't do much for me, as I am getting thin and can't eat;" and then raising herself upon her arm, she continued, her eyes lighting up with a supernatural brightness, "I can't say all that prayer, but I can the pretty hymn which is in the book under my head. I can't read, but I know it's there." And then the peach colour of her cheek deepened as she opened the "penny hymn-book," and repeated the first two verses of the hymn:
"'Come, let us join our cheerful songs
With angels round the throne.'"
Then she threw herself back as though exhausted, but her face assumed an expression of intense happiness. After a few minutes the question was asked, "And how did you learn that hymn?" "A little girl at the tramps' lodging, at Ipswich," she replied, "went to Sunday-school, and took me with her for three Sundays: the lady saw I was ill, and kissed me, and told me how to say that hymn, and it makes me so happy. And I am going to Him soon," she whispered, gazing up with evident delight. "You must not talk any more, dear," said the visitor, "but I will now pray to Jesus, to whom the angels in heaven are singing, and ask Him to make you very good now, and then to take you to be with Him in glory." "Ask Him," whispered the child, "to make father and mother good: they get drunk and frighten me so, and say such wicked words." The request was complied with, and He who has told His disciples to "ask that they may receive," was petitioned, in simple language but in earnest prayer, to bless the child and to save the parents.
A few necessaries were that evening sent for the child; and two days after the Missionary again ascended that dark staircase: he did so with pleasure, because he felt that in that dismal room there was a little one who loved the Saviour, and who would soon be called to His presence and personally blessed by Him. The door was opened by the mother, who burst into tears and turned away; upon glancing toward the bed of rags, the visitor was startled at seeing a small elm coffin in its place, and inquired when the child died. "Late in the night when you were here," the mother replied, sobbing. "She was in great pain, and sat up in the bed and took out her little book, and said the hymn she was so fond of—
'Come, let us join our cheerful songs
With angels round the throne;'
and then her cough came on, and she fell back in the bed and died like a lamb." While they were speaking, the father, a low-looking tramp, came in; and the Missionary told them of the child's request that he would pray for them that they might be made good. Both of them cried with intense feeling, and then they knelt beside that little coffin, while prayer, deep earnest prayer, was offered for their salvation. That evening, and for several months after, they attended the meeting in the Widow's room, and before they left the place for a settled life, not a tramp's, the man gave proof of his reformation, and the woman that she had believed to the saving of her soul.
In that day when the Lord shall give to each of His servants according as their work shall be, the lady who taught that beggar child a hymn about His love and glory, and won her heart to Him with a kiss of Christian charity, will in no wise lose her reward.
