SLUM CHILDREN.
"9!O the casual observer," we read in Mr. Charles Booth's "Life and Labour of the People," "London street children, especially of the poorer class, proclaim themselves chiefly by their noisiness, their rags and dirt, their tendency to swarm, their occasional pathos, their frequent fun, their general air of squalor and neglect." This is, we think, a fairly true description of the superficial aspect of the slum child. Wordsworth's declara- tion that the child is father of the man is a truism too well 'worn to bear dispute, but we must know a child very well indeed before we can prophesy what manner of man he will be. We must count not only with his inheritance and his environment, but with the force of his natural disposition,- i.e., with that entirely new piece which exists in every human being, and which is, after all, far stronger than the other two factors. That all children, whatever their inheritance or surroundings, contain in themselves a force which makes for goodness, which is an integral part of the "new piece'," we firmly believe. How else is it possible to account for the fair average of character produced by the worst possible conditions? Wordsworth himself puts this view very strikingly before his readers in two poems, one of which is called " Beggars " and the other "A Sequel." The poet, wandering among his beloved hills, describes a gipsy woman whom he met, and who asked an alms of him. Unmindful of Sir Thomas Browne's warn- ing to "relieve no man upon the rhetoric of his miseries," and being much struck by her beauty, he gave her money, though without believing in her necessity Her snit no faltering scruples checked ; Forth did she pour, in current free, Tales that could challenge no respect But from a blind credulity ; And yet a boon I gave her; for the creature Was beautiful to see—a weed of glorious feature."
The poet passed on, and soon encountered "a pair of little boys" chasing butterflies, who from their likeness to the gipsy woman he concluded to be her sons. They, "ready with a plaintive whine," begged also, inventing a still less plausible tale, and imploring compassion on the score that their mother was just dead. Wordsworth's prudence is proof against this second assault. He refuses the children, and stops to watch them as they continue their sport, quite unabashed by the evident failure of their story to convince or to touch their hearer. Years afterwards, happening near the same spot, it occurred to him to wonder what had become of the two children. Where are they now, those wanton boys ? " he asks himself, and the answer which arises in his mind is optimistic. He hoped when he saw them as children that their upbringing might not ruin them, and he hopes when he thinks of them as men that they have risen above it- " And to my heart is still endeared The faith with which it then was cheered, The faith which saw that gladsome pair Walk through the fire with unsinged hair."
Or if this is too hopeful a view, he trusts they— "At least were free From touch of deadly injury ? Destined. whate'er their earthly doom, To mercy and immortal bloom I" That the children of the London slums should come, as the great majority do come, through the fire without fatal injury is a far greater miracle than that these little gipsy boys should escape hurt. They at least passed their childhood under circumstances of physical well-being, surrounded by the sweet influences of Nature, having the chance of developing the healthy body which can but have its effect on the mind. Physically, mentally, and morally, could a worse environment be imagined than that which exists in a London slum ? Speak- ing upon a calculation of probabilities, what chance has a child brought up in such a place of turning out what is vaguely called a decent man,—a man, that is, who will accelerate rather than retard the general movement of the world away from savagery and lawlessness and towards civilisation and self-control? Visions of ropes and needles' eyes, of camels and wicket gates, pass before the minds of those who spend a few hours at intervals in the atmosphere which the slum child breathes habitually. How is it that experience belies probability, and prophecy, that the street-bred boy can be readily turned into a very fine soldier, and that, soldier or civilian, take him all round, he is by no means a bad fellow? Brutes and " Hooligans," both young and old, do, of course, exist, but they form a small, if a strong, minority.
The men who make up the London crowd are for the most part industrious, kind-hearted, good-tempered, and uncomplaining, always ready to help those whom accident throws before their eyes into momentary distress, always prepared to make a joke of their own discomfort, and showing in a marked degree that "cheery stoicism" which used to be thought a distinguishing mark of the aristocracy. They have more sense of justice and less of envy than any foreign town population; and if they are more unthrifty than any other civilised people, they are, on the other hand, more generous. We admit that the situation is not wholly explicable, and fall back for an explanatory theory on the good element in human nature which is never so patent as in childhood. Read a story to any child old enough to follow the sequence of events therein described, and he will admire the hero and hate the villain, and be dissatisfied if poetical.
justice is not meted out in the end both to the one and the other. This power of discrimination between good and evil when the two are plainly displayed to them is at the root of a widely spread sentimental idea that children's instinct enables them without data to judge correctly of character. We do not believe this notion contains much truth. Children like those who like them, and endow their friends with all sorts of imaginary good qualities. They are not at all logical, and having no experience, they are of necessity somewhat self-centred.. The quality they look for is kindness, and where they find it they are not keen-sighted moral critics. There is so much in
grown-up conduct which they cannot possibly understand, and on which they pass no sort of judgment, though they may remember and judge in later life, not unusually ante- dating their mature conclusion. This is, we think, the reason why the effect of their parents' precepts is not wholly neutra- lised by the sight of a somewhat indifferent practice. Very few people are so wicked as not to have some vague desire that their children should be good; they would not instruct them in wrong-doing, thcugh they may not have the self- control to set them a good example. Only a few days ago a lady of some experience among slum children told the present writer that she had been often startled to bear copybook maxims quoted and adhered to as what "mother says" by children whose mothers never thought of putting into practice the abstract instruction which they offered to their offspring by precept. The instinct of a young child does not enable it to judge of the mother's character, but it does enable it to appreciate the moral value of the ideal set before it. Experience comes slowly even in the East End, and when it has once opened a child's eyes the force of example may prove very dangerous; nevertheless, the moral nature which accepted the truism remains a supernatural bulwark seldom entirely destroyed. "Slum children," says Mr. Bray, the author of a remarkable paper on "The Children of the Town" which appeared last spring in "The Heart of the Empire," "are, on tl. whole, surprisingly innocent, and remain untouched by the harmful influence the conditions of home life might well be expected to exercise." But apart from this divinely in- stilled knowledge and no less divinely preserved ignorance, there are other and lesser agencies which make for the salva- tion of the London child. The majority even of the poorest homes are not wholly uninfluenced by love. We must apologise for again quoting Mr. Bray in support of our theory, but he is, we believe, the most recent writer upon slum children, has lived among them, and has enjoyed very exceptional opportunities of knowing their condition and character. "Slum parents," he says," love their children and treat them according to their own lights kindly and well." The children expect kindness, he goes on, and seek rather than avoid the acquaintance of unknown grown-up people. "This friendli- ness, this unhesitating trust in strangers, is one of their most beautiful characteristics, and the secret of the strange charm they possess." The children of whom we used to hear, who put their hands to their ears to ward off a cuff when any grown person approaches them, belong to an imaginary race, like those other little Londoners who have never seen a tree or a blade of grass.
Another influence which helps to raise the slum child above his surroundings is, of course, the schools. There is no one who has watched these children inside and out of the great barrack-like Board-school building but must be struck by two opposite things: the wildness of the slum child's spirits out of doors, and his curious aptitude for discipline under a roof. Take the following description from Mr. Charles Booth's book, which no one can accuse either of sentimentality or of Inaccuracy :—" The first thing that strikes a stranger on sntering a school is the wonderful order that everywhere prevails. There is nothing to indicate harsh controL On the contrary, children and teachers seem as a rule to be on quite amicable terms; there is even in some schools what approaches to camaraderie betwecn them. But the discipline is perfect- From end to end, through the whole school, in every depart- ment, it is the same. Ragged little gamins run quietly in harness. It is this responsiveness to rule—right rule—which more than any other thing gives ground for hope in regard to the future of these poor children."
One other factor must not be underrated by those who theorise about the special Providence which seems to watch over the soul of a town child, and that is the power of the childish imagination. It may be accurate, but in a sense it is not true of any child to say that he is always, in any surround-
ings however, good or bad. A little boy may spend hours sitting on his doorstep in a given court staring at the bricks and mortar on all sides and the washing flapping over his head, but his soul may be all the while in South Africa, or rather in that land of fancy to which just now he will probably give that name. No doubt the picture which he calls up of the Dark Continent is even further from the truth than the one his parents piece together out of the penny illustrated papers. His battlefield probably resembles a London park, and his soldiers look as they look at the Lord Mayor's Show. He has little data for his dream, but he is sure to have enough to take him away from the world in which he lives, and his imagination provides him with change, pleasure, and perhaps heroic opportunity. But if we enumerate every influence for good to be found in the child-world of London, it remains a mystery why Tommy and Mary Anne are not worse than they are. What is it which enables them to keep this aptitude for law and order, this power of love and of imagination? We cannot wholly explain; we can only suppose it to be some sort of divine birthright, — "an heritage which cometh of the Lord."
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