{"id":129,"date":"2020-03-26T15:41:59","date_gmt":"2020-03-26T15:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/?page_id=129"},"modified":"2021-07-12T19:30:31","modified_gmt":"2021-07-12T19:30:31","slug":"household-words","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/household-words-2\/household-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Pg. 597"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Household<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFamiliar in their Mouths as\nHOUSEHOLD WORDS.\u201d \u2014Shakespeare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A WEEKLY JOURNAL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No. 129.]\nSATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1852. [Price 2d.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BOYS TO MEND.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Umbrellas\nto mend, and chairs to mend, and clocks to mend, are called in our streets\ndaily. Who shall count up the numbers of thousands of children to mend, in and\nabout those same streets, whose voice of ignorance cries aloud as the voice of\nwisdom once did, and is as little regarded; who go to pieces for the want of\nmending, and die unrepaired!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People are naturally glad to catch at any plea, in mitigation of a great national wicked\u00adness. Many good persons will urge, now-a-days, as to this neglected business of boy-mending, \u201cO! but there are the Ragged Schools!\u201d Admitting the full merit of the ragged schools; rendering the highest praise to those disin\u00adterested and devoted teachers, of both sexes, who labour in them; urging the consideration of their claims on all who pass through the streets of great towns with eyes in their heads, and awakened hearts in their breasts; we still must not disguise the plain fact that they are, at best, a slight and ineffectual pallia\u00adtive of an enormous evil. They want system, power, means, authority, experienced and thoroughly trained teachers. If the instruc\u00adtion of ordinary children be an art requiring such a peculiar combination of qualities and such sound discretion, that but few skilled persons arrive at perfection in it, how much more difficult is the instruction of those who, even if they be children in years, have more to unlearn than they have to learn; whose ignorance has been coupled with constant evil education; and among whose intellects there is no such thing as virgin soil to be found! Good intentions alone, will never be a sufficient qualification for such a labour, while this world lasts. We have seen some\u00adthing of ragged schools from their first esta\u00adblishment, and have rarely seen one, free from very injudicious and mistaken teaching. And what they can<\/em> do, is so little, relatively to the gigantic proportions of the monster with which they have to grapple, that if their existence were to be accepted as a sufficient excuse for leaving ill alone, we should hold it far better that they had never been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where, in England, is the public\ninstitution for the prevention of crime among that neglected class of youth to\nwhom it is not second but first Nature; who are born to nothing else, and bred\nto nothing else? Where, for these, are the bolts and bars, outside<\/em> the\nprison-door, which is so heavily fastened within? Nowhere, to our knowledge.\nThe next best thing\u2014though there is a broad, deep gulf between the two\u2014is an\ninstitution for the reformation of such young offenders. And to that, we made a\nvisit on one of these last hot summer days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A dull mist of heat had taken\npossession of the streets. Through the warm mist we roll in a warm omnibus.\nOver the parapet of London Bridge we see London in a heavy lump with the hot mist\nabout it, and almost expect that St. Paul\u2019s presently will throw out a spark,\nand the whole town, like a firework, begin to fizz and crackle. There is\nnothing that we might not be permitted to expect as a result of heat, upon the\nhottest morning of the hottest dog-days within the memory of the oldest dog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who sit with us in the\ncarriages of the Brighton train, wonder (and really not without occasion, as we\nignorantly think) why a terminus must be built with a cover in the shape of an\noven, and why it must bake batches of passengers in railway trains like cakes\nin tins. Now we are off, and it is cooler. We pass over the red, underdone\nsurface of Lon\u00addon, upon which the blacks are falling cruelly; if London be now\nfrying, it will make a dirty dish, we fancy. Here are market gardens, fields,\nhills, stations, woods, villages, and way\u00adside inns. Here is Bed Hill, where\nthe train stops, and we get out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a cluster of inns\noutside the station, and certain freeholders of East Surrey, warm with sun and\npolitics, seek coolness in beer out\u00adside the inns. They are a little noisy;\nbut, pass\u00ading between hedges we begin to toil up hill. The distant song of the\nfreeholders is drowned by the nearer song of the thrush; and the dog roses that\nmake a roadside garden of each hedge, put our hearts in good humour with the\ndog-days. Every hedge is a garden. Where did we ever see more wild flowers\nclustered together? There is a very California of honeysuckle. There are clumps\nof mallow, blossoming on hillocks beside every gate that leads into the corn\nfields; there are yellow stars of the ranunculus, and crimson poppy blossoms,\nand the delicate peaked fairy hats of which Bindweed is ostensibly the
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cFamiliar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS.\u201d \u2014Shakespeare. HOUSEHOLD WORDS. A WEEKLY JOURNAL. CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS. No. 129.] SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1852. [Price 2d. BOYS TO MEND. Umbrellas to mend, and chairs to mend, and clocks to mend, are called in our streets daily. Who shall count up the numbers of thousands of children […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":664,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-129","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":723,"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/129\/revisions\/723"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}