iniquity, tiny vessels as full as they could hold of naughtiness; nor can
I say a great deal to the contrary. Small proof of parental discipline
could I discern, save when a mother (drunken, I sincerely hope) snatched
her own imp out of a group of pale, half-naked, humor-eaten abortions that
were playing and squabbling together in the mud, turned up its tatters,
brought down her heavy hand on its poor little tenderest part, and let it
go again with a shake. If the child knew what the punishment was for, it
was wiser than I pretend to be. It yelled, and went back to its playmates
in the mud. Yet let me bear testimony to what was beautiful, and more
touching than anything that I ever witnessed in the intercourse of happier
children. I allude to the superintendence which some of these small people
(too small, one would think, to be sent into the street alone, had there
been any other nursery for them) exercised over still smaller ones. Whence
they derived such a sense of duty, unless immediately from God, I cannot
tell; but it was wonderful to observe the expression of responsibility in
their deportment, the anxious fidelity with which they discharged their
unfit office, the tender patience with which they linked their less
pliable impulses to the wayward footsteps of an infant, and let it guide
them whithersoever it liked. In the hollow-cheeked, large-eyed girl of
ten, whom I saw giving a cheerless oversight to her baby-brother, I did
not so much marvel at it. She had merely come a little earlier than usual
to the perception of what was to be her business in life. But I admired
the sickly-looking little boy, who did violence to his boyish nature by
making himself the servant of his little sister,--she too small to walk,
and he too small to take her in his arms,--and therefore working a kind of
miracle to transport her from one dirt-heap to another. Beholding such
works of love and duty, I took heart again, and deemed it not so
impossible, after all, for these neglected children to find a path through
the squalor and evil of their circumstances up to the gate of heaven.
Perhaps there was this latent good in all of them, though generally they