loves walking with a A genuine walker is never alone. He makes friends wherever he goes. For this reason I do not know if it be desirable to map out a route. A church, and a churchyard, and a river take his fancy and he lingers about for hours held captive. I can never pass a churchyard; the older-fashioned it looks the stronger is the fancy to stroll about its tombstones and nettles. He enters a roadside water-mill to get a peep at the dusty millers, and he chats with them for a good half-hour. He steps into an ale-house for a bottle of soda, and odd talk of odd drovers amuses him, and hours after he is leisurely carried with them off his road by their anecdotes of life or of the fair they are taking their charge to. A collier returning home, an artisan in search of work with his red bundled handkerchief, a farmer and his dog, a school girl on a donkey, are all companions. Whatever life is going is his companion, even the birds of the hedgerows. Companionship during the day has its misfortunes, and it would be well if each could go his own way during day and meet at night. The country characters one speaks to possess this virtue, though they may be characterless themselves, they enable you to gather the character of the country you are passing through. But it is a mistake to imagine a walker runs no risks. My experience is that he runs risks enough, risks that put one's courage to the test. It is at no time agreeable to get a pair of skinned heels and especially when holidaying, nor to be awakened in early morning by the unmistakable signs of having slept in a damp bed, nor to be bit on the leg, of all parts of the body, by a treacherous dog. These are risks sufficient to add a spice of adventure, though it be of the homely order. No walker loves rain, but he accepts it with good grace. A rainy day is full of surprises, and walking then is not so unpleasant as being confined to an hotel. I was well rewarded for a walk in the wet from Moffat to Yarrow by the sight from the hostelry door in the evening. The rain clouds drifted away, lifted their shadows from St. Mary's Loch, the rain then ceased, and byand-by the inn lasses went afield with petticoats kilted to milk the kye; the angler rowed home with a heavy basket and a light heart; and each one talked of it being "a fine nicht noo," as if he had had a hand in it. It is at nightfall that the walker is most. at home, though he be most abroad. In walking into the town and selecting the inn with his own eyes, without being hurried into the first by railway or the latter by a stuffy omnibus, a man feels as if he had naturally grown into or become a part of the place. In every town, in every inn, he is at home, for he finds in both a resting-place. No soldier ever sallied forth with so much spirit of adventure as a walker, after a cold bath in the "Regiment of Health," to use Bacon's phrase, saunters into the streets of a market town of a summer evening. Then his heart and his steps draw him intuitively to the open, to the riverside, to a bridge, or to a place of vantage on a hill. With the close of a day comes a sense of completeness, of satisfaction, and a deep feeling that his holidays can never come to an end, since a summer day is so long when spent on the high-roads and by-roads, and since it is so full of happy experiences in vigorous health. With evening his day's journey has closed, but another journey then begins, the journey of ruminating fancy over what the day has brought forth and the nightfall presents in a strange town's echoes and shadows. The thoughts, the sights, the remarks of the last twelve hours come rushing and chasing back on his memory like the flotsam driven rapidly up the stream by the flow of the tide on the Wye at Tintern, and he sees again what the ebb of thought had hours ago drifted seawards. It is a time when a man's thoughts are of value, and so shape themselves as to astonish him with their fitness. His mind is as receptive as a photographer's camera to all the sights and sounds that fill his ears and eyes at nightfall. His mind goes a gleaning over the by-gone day, his thoughts are quickened by the new experiences, and his heart is deeply touched with the many bits of homely life and scenery. Nature and nightfall keep him out of doors; he is like a child again. Letters and printed pages are discarded for those of life. All this, you say, you could enjoy within ten miles of your own home. If you are so fortunate, then, my advice is, my dear sir, never go from home; but I find in every town or village new experiences, whether in thought or life. Seeing new villages, walking along strange roads, is as interesting to me as reading new books or seeing new actresses. Travelling makes my thoughts travel also, and it is sometimes only when I approach home that the thoughts and fancies which have been accumulating "come home" to me, to use a common phrase, with staggering force. To lean on a bridge with a great lump of sympathy somewhere below one's throat, to stand stock-still for half an hour and find pleasure sufficient in following with one's eyes figures of lads and lasses walking arm and arm on the footpaths in the churchyard, children with white pinafores playing hide and seek behind the tombstones, aproned shopkeepers putting up their shutters and putting out the lights, and in hearing along the meadow the Jews' harp twanged by a rustic sitting astride a footpath stile, and rustic words of criticising encouragement from other figures, is this not to take happiness and be with life? To feel this one must have walked into this scene during the day from many miles away. We Now, travelling is not sight-seeing; if that were so, many an umbrella would be intelligent. To travel, one's mind, too, must travel, chat in every village, stay in every lovely place as long as we stay, and see and feel for human life in its peace and in its homes. When the lamps are lit at night in the inn parlour, this homely feeling takes possession and we become thorough provincials, and feel all the better, the happier for it. We think there is no life so interesting in the world as that we see in our inn. think we never heard talk so thoroughly British. We linger in the bagatelle-room with the smell of the beer pots, and listen to the click of the balls and the natives' hum of drowsy talk about dull times, and price of cattle, and rent of lands and beeves, and everything going to the bad so slowly, and think it the liveliest talk mortal man could wish. In the bar are quicker-witted men sipping grog, and sucking long pipes, and telling merry stories in a reproving manner; men with faces like a row of bishops or judges. Then, by-and-by, the vesper bells at ten ring out from the steeple, there is a comparing of time on their watches, some moral reflections pass, we hear quiet goodnights at the outside door, then hastening footsteps down the pavement, clanging of doors, and clicking of locks, out go the lights, the village is off to bed, and we are left alone. We We But we are not left alone to ourselves in the common phrase, for we have our train of thoughts, our new observations of character and talk, our last pipe, and our book. read then with quickened fancy, we bring to the pages our own new illustrations, we wait to see if the author has anything to say applicable to us in the mood we are in. feel as near as possible to being a living commentary. A single play of Shakespeare will serve for a fortnight, and nothing is so good reading to a man a-footas foot notes. A man then feels all over a king in the possession of a royalty of happiness. He then looks straight at life, and BY KATHERINE SAUNDERS, AUTHOR OF "GIDEON'S ROCK," ETC. BETWEEN my cot and the eastern sea, Rupert, the rope-maker, comes and stands, Between my cot and the eastern sea, Whose hopes had ebbed with the eastern sea. And this I learned by the eastern sea: For such as meekly shall failure take, TWELVE YEARS' DEALING WITH NEGLECTED CHILDREN. BY WILLIAM MITCHELL, CONVENER OF THE GLASGOW SCHOOL FIRST PAPER. NEGLECTED children; look at them! Boards to look after the education of all the children of the community between five and thirteen years of age. For this purpose the School Board was equipped with powers of no ordinary kind. Their officers were authorised to report to the Board the names and addresses of all those children whose education was being neglected. It thereupon became the duty of the Board to summon the parents or guardians of such children before them, that they might have the opportunity of offering any reasonable excuse for past default, or of promising amendment in time to come. They are to be seen in all directions -in streets and lanes-at markets, bazaars, railway stations-single and in groups, boys and girls, occupied, idle, or at play-many hidden away in holes and corners where no eye sees and no heart cares for them. Endless is the variety of condition, conduct, and character. Much has been done on their behalf-factory laws enacted, education acts, industrial schools established, institutions without number; still there they are in their hundreds and thousands, as full of life and of human possibilities as any other part of the body social. Like clay in the hands of the It will readily be seen how wide a field potter they are waiting to be moulded. The here presented itself for dealing with neglected material there for goodly vessels, honest, children and their parents. There were uphonourable citizens of the future; and the wards of 90,000 children of school age in the danger is equally great that left in their pre- city, and, after making every reasonable sent condition they will grow up to swell the allowance, it was ascertained that nearly already too numerous class who bring dis- 20,000 of these were either not at school, or grace on themselves and shame and discredit their attendance was so irregular and interon their country. "But," you say, are mittent as not to be worthy of the name. they not being educated? That will bring them round all right." Will it? I fear not, or at least only partially. Education is the leading spirit of the age, but education is not food; education is not clothing; education cannot take the place of home comforts, home training, home influences. Children must have the natural and material wants of the body supplied ere the benefits and blessings of education can be either received or valued. The Education Act lays upon the parent the duty of educating his child, but makes no corresponding demand in respect to his physical well-being. By the administration of the Act, how ever, light is being thrown into many a dark and hidden corner, and attention is being drawn to the miserable condition of a great multitude for whom education will only be a mockery until their untoward circumstances are in some degree amended. Twelve years' experience in connection with the School Board of Glasgow provides the chief material for the following pages. They are offered in the hope that a deeper and more widespread interest will be manifested in sustained efforts for the amelioration of neglected children. The provisions of the Scotch Education Act (1872) made it imperative on School How to deal in the most effectual, and yet most kindly and considerate manner with these parents and children, became one of the earliest questions at the Board. It was resolved that the first step should be simply a call upon the parents by one of the School Board officers for the purpose of friendly remonstrance, pointing out at the same time the requirements of the Act. If such call proved ineffectual, it was to be followed by a printed notice detailing the parents' legal duty, and calling attention to the serious consequences of continued neglect. The best results flowed from this simple dealing. A large proportion of parents and children, once careless and negligent, realised their duty and sent their children to school. There were, however, a considerable number whom these preliminary measures failed to move. To deal effectually with these, the Board resolved to hold frequently, and at stated intervals, in the various districts of the city, meetings to which such defaulters might be summoned in terms of the Act. These meetings were begun in the first year of the Board's existence. They have been continued during the last twelve years, either fortnightly or at more or less frequent intervals, as the exigences of the district seemed to require. More recently they have been held once a week. From eighty to one hundred parents-guardians or heads of families are summoned with their children to each meeting. A large room in one of the Board Schools in the selected district is appropriated for the reception of the company. There, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, may be found on the appointed day a gathering replete with elements as sad, as varied, as extraordinary, as probably has ever been depicted. The children are of course the Board's peculiar care; but the education and welfare of the children cannot be seen to without considering the condition and circumstances of the parents, or, where there are no parents, the circumstances into which the children have been thrown. This inquiry, gone about as it is in an orderly and firm, yet kind and courteous manner, evokes a revelation of social life and conduct that renders it often difficult to say whether pity, sympathy, or indignation should most predominate. One might have expected that after a few years of such meetings the sources whence they originate would dry up, and the occasion for them cease. It is far otherwise. The fountain, alas! is perennial. For one with the pen of a ready writer there are stories of heroic fortitude and endurance, pictures of moral grandeur and beauty, scenes of harrowing distress and misery which would tax his utmost powers. Combined with these, and of far more frequent occurrence, are tales of wicked, foolish, misspent lives, where the demon of intemperance has held sway, and where the poor, suffering children have been the sad victims of their parents' sin and shame. It is my purpose to classify these elements, and to indicate some of their leading features; to point out the manner in which many of the children are being brought up; the cold, the hunger, the nakedness, to which they are too often exposed; the strange and fitful variety of child life and character constantly revealed --sometimes in parental devotion, sometimes in parental defiance, frequently in absences from home, even on the part of children seven or eight years old. Then again, the stirring life of those who are called waifs and strays-street children-many of whom turn an honest penny by selling newspapers, diaries, matches, sticks, or engage in casual employment on milk carts or lorries, or go messages, or, at Christmas time, figure on the boards of the stage during the pantomime season. Nor can I fail to notice the difficulties which attach to children born and bred in dwellings (I cannot call them homes) where evil influences of every kind abound, and where the children have naturally assumed the colour and character of those with whom they have been all their lives associated. They cannot but be in constant danger of following evil courses or falling into a life of crime. Must they be thus left? How is their rescue to be accomplished? Difficult problems, and many-sided, constantly present themselves, suggesting crucial questions that often put members of the Board to their wits' end. How far is a poor family called upon to sacrifice the breadwinning capacities of the children for the sake of their education? At what stage may the oldest boy of a widowed mother earn a wage to keep the wolf from the door or help to clothe and feed himself? How may a high-spirited woman with her children be kept out of the poor-house when left with half-adozen little orphans? What is to be done when a man leaves his children in the morning with the fear that his wife will pawn their clothes or squander the school fees for drink before he returns; or what is to be done when man and wife are living apart and quarrelling over the possession of the children? Or when father, sometimes in despair, sometimes in sheer wickedness, deserts his family altogether? What are the agencies. best fitted to meet the wants, the evils, the difficulties, the perplexities of such a state of things? Do they exist? If they do, are they being successfully wrought, and by whom? What are the fruits of such labours? Yet further I would draw attention to the sad and mournful company of infirm children in every stage of weakness, deformity, or disease, many, alas! brought into this condition through the misconduct or intemperance of their parents. Certain of them confined to dwellings of squalid poverty and misery where no ministering hand ever reaches them, no kind word ever cheers them, no ray of glad sunlight penetrates the gloom, or breath of balmy air fans the pallid cheek. What is doing-what still remains to be done for these suffering little ones? Like If I can, even in a limited degree, portray the mere outline of what I have indicated, my purpose will have been served. the Dark Continent, this is a region well known to exist but only partially explored. The reckless misconduct of a certain class of the poor has stamped a brand of ill-favour and distrust on all, and because of this stigma many worthy and honest sons and daughters of poverty and misfortune are driven to hide |