. Platform echoes: or, Living truths for head and heart . saw itin such a light as he has seen it lately; but he says instead of 498 TOTAL DEPRAVITY, total abstinence being the remedy you must educate thepeople; make a man respect himself, and then he will governhimself. Well, go and see one of those poor little wretchesin the street who begs you to give him a penny. I havesometimes felt as if it was almost impossible to refuse them;yet we are apt to say, What fix, a parcel of miser a hie littlewretches, how the city is infestedwith them/ Now who arethey? Theyare children, al-though we of-ten
. Platform echoes: or, Living truths for head and heart . saw itin such a light as he has seen it lately; but he says instead of 498 TOTAL DEPRAVITY, total abstinence being the remedy you must educate thepeople; make a man respect himself, and then he will governhimself. Well, go and see one of those poor little wretchesin the street who begs you to give him a penny. I havesometimes felt as if it was almost impossible to refuse them;yet we are apt to say, What fix, a parcel of miser a hie littlewretches, how the city is infestedwith them/ Now who arethey? Theyare children, al-though we of-ten find amongthem an oldhead on youngshoulders. Andwhat a historyis theirs, a his-tory fearful inall its pages,a history such nothing of. Little girls of ten, e 1 e v e n, t w e 1 v e. a r e there; one of them looked up in my face in the Salt Market. Glasgow, and pleaded Gie me a dram.* How old are you? No so aulds my mither. But what do you want ? Gie me a dram, come down the close, and Ill tell ye. You speak of them as miserable little children. Go home. GIE ME A Ill \M. FROM THE CHURCH TO THE DRAM-SHOP. 499 with them, and you will find that they are sent out to beg inthe streets, to steal and to lie, in nine cases out of ten to sup-port the miserable and debauched husband and wife, theirfather and mother. Go into some of the lowest streets, asI have been, and ask that practised thief who is loungingat the corner of the gin-shop, who these children belong tothat are playing near him. These children are educated; yes, they are. Stand withme at the corner of the street in a low vicinity and lookaround you. These outcasts are being educated ; wretchedlittle creatures in tatters and filth, old before their time, andskilled in lies and deceit, trained to pilfer, educated in thefilthiest vices. There was sometimes to be seen in the front of a whiskey-shop in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh, an old gray-haired manwith a noble brow, fiddling for half-pence, his wife every nowand then passing
Size: 1560px × 1601px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjecttempera, bookyear1890
