Pg. 602

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 602 HOUSEHOLD WORDS. [Conducted by

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 he stood on a ladder up among the green leaves working at the roof of the new smith’s shop, thinks it was a sudden temptation that was too much for the boy; the boy had done very well indeed before; he had no reason to complain of the boy at all; thought very well of him. We had a bright idea that it might be a knife with a handle full of extraor­dinary temptations—corkscrews, boot-hooks, picks, gimlets, punches, and so forth; but the carpenter said (unwillingly, as a good-natured man who perceived our drift) No, it

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 was just a common knife! This is a good-looking culprit, considered likely to reform. Seems to have a manly sort of repentance breaking out in him, which promises well.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Dinner-time now; the boys fare at their tables; and it is suet-pudding day. One boy says grace, and all the boys eat pudding, except those of the fourth and fifth classes, who eat respectively, bread and cheese, and bread. The allowance of pudding is suited to

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 an agricultural appetite. The puddings are baked like bread, in tins; so that there is a crust all round, and the juvenile taste runs upon scooping out the pudding first, and then eating its shell. Some rejoice in their privilege of treacle. Class the Fifth is not happy in a taste for bread. One little fellow has spilt water on the table and has deposited his bread in it, in order to complain that it is wet. His neighbour complains that the school­master who teaches him, like his companions, for two hours daily, has a “spite again him.” We inspect the register of offences. The column headed disorder, is the one that is most filled. Order is necessary, although we are not thunderstruck at finding that the boys in this hot weather are found in the pond at unseasonable hours; and that, be­coming restless at night, they will get out of bed and walk about, to the distress of their companions.

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 Remembering that every one of these boys has been walled in a prison, for which he qualified through scenes of filth and vice, it is a fact most honorable to the chaplain and demonstrative of his real influence over them, that the offence of profanity and bad language occurs, throughout the whole community of more than a hundred boys, only about three or four times in a week. The trust reposed by the boys in their chief guide, is manifest in the frank looks with which he has been met throughout the morning, and the free and frequent communi­cation which the children have evidently claimed, whenever they have had anything to ask or tell.

¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 Dinner is soon over and all stand up. After a pause, during which perfect silence is established, grace is said. The schoolmaster then strikes his tuning-fork and leads in the doxology. There is a little organ in the well-appointed chapel, and every opportunity is taken of introducing music into the routine of the school. For our especial pleasure, the tuning-fork is again put in requisition, and the juvenile offenders against law, with reve­rent (though, of course, here and there un­promising) faces, and with good voices, sing a hymn in praise of faith and kindness one towards another.

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 The singing of the boys remained as melody upon our minds after we had left the Farm, and wandered out again into the sunny ways. Returning by new paths, we dived into the coolness of a narrow sheltered lane, through which a brook was flowing. A hen with her young brood fluttered before us. The chickens in dismay, the hen in wrath and fear, covering the retreat of her children, labouring to find for them a safe path out of the way of evil—for as evil we were obviously regarded —sped down the narrow lane the faster as we made haste to get by, and relieve them of the cause of terror. At last the mother lodged her whole brood in a hole by the way­side, and stood forward menacing death to all the powers that would do them harm. We thought that if Britannia had a little of the hen in her, and took but half as much care of her brood of unprotected young, there would not be so many crushed boys to restore to wholeness—so many fallen girls to raise.

¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 1 Our honorable friend! The system must be devised, the administrators must be reared, the preventible young criminals must be pre­vented, the State must put its Industrial and Farm Schools first, and its prisons last—and to this complexion you must come. You may put the time off a little, and destroy (not irresponsibly) a few odd thousands of im­mortal souls in the meantime; but, the change must come. It were better for you, and the whole constituent body of Verbosity, to come to it with a good grace; for the thing itself is as sure as Death, our honorable friend.

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 THE MERRY MEN OF CAIRO.

¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 1 There are two incontrovertible truths, that Allah (whose name be exalted) is Allah,” and that “Cairo is the Queen of Cities.” Franks say that Marsiglia, and Londra, and Parigi, are larger and finer; but by one argument we confound them. How comes it that they undertake a journey of many months to see our city, if it be inferior in anything to the places they come from? May such liars be condemned to eternal fire; and may Cairo never cease to assert its supremacy, and con­tinue to be what its name imports, Al Kahira, the Conqueror.

¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 Cairo contains the largest and the oldest mosques, the most elegant fountains, the richest bazaars, the most spacious wakalahs, the most pious men, and the most lovely women, in the world. Its excellences are indeed ten thousand—five  thousand physical, and five thousand moral; and it has been calculated that to describe each excellence with due detail, would require three thousand