Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1885 — Gutter-Chlid Life. [ARTICLE]

Gutter-Chlid Life.

“ihem two isn’t anything to do with ma'No, thanky; I’ve got quite mough of ’em to look after without,” said the 10-year-old mass of rags I was literviewing. And as he glanced towards his sister (who was now comforting the baby in the midst c-f a fit of i-oughing) his young face grew grave md anxious as that of a middle-agpd father of a family. “What do you mean when you say that you have to look after them ?” I isked “You are expected to see that they don’t get into mischief, I suppose?" “Something more’n that,” he replied, with a sober wag of his red head. “I’ve -got to find grub for ’em. There’s another one of ’em—my young brother Bill. He's a sitting by the fire in the landlady’s kitchen, ’cos he can’t walk.” “What is the matter with Bill, then? Is he a crappie?” The old look gave ‘ place to a grin again as he replied, “You wouldn’t say 30 if you was to see him chucking hand-springs and sommersaults a-side of the ’buses. It was the wheel of a cab what jvent over his toes and lamed him.” “But where are your father and mother?” “Father’s down at the docks, or somewhere, I suppose, looking after a job. Mother, she works over on Tooley street, at the tater sack making. They goes out first thing in the morning and come home last thing at night. That’s all we see of ’em.” “But wouldn’t it be better to stay indoors this bad weather?” “Can’t ; they lock the door of our room, fear we might fall out o’ winder, or set the place on fire, or something.” “And you, being the eldest,” I remarked, “are, I suppose, trusted with the money to buy food for your brother and sister all day long ?” He grinned again, and then laughed outright, the joke tickled him so. “Ketch ’em leaving any money along o’ me,” he presently made answer. “The way of it is this, mister. We has some bread and coffee before mother goes out in the morning, and all we gets ’twixt then and 8 or 9 o’clock at night is what I pick up. When mother corned home, we have some of what she brings home for supper, and that’s the lot.” “But your father, don’t he bring home any money ?” A resentful scowl distorted the boy’s mobile face as he replied: “A rare lot ho brings home. More like he’d take away what I get if he’d the chance. He’d do it more, only mother rounds on him about it and sticks up for us. A stunning mother she is too,” continued the grateful young street Arab admiringly. “No matter how he punches her or‘pastes’ her, she won’t give in about that. ‘What he’—that's me, you know —‘ever picks up/ ses she, ‘let him divide it among ’em, and if you take it away from ’em, you’ll have to settle with me for it when I come home.’ ” “But what is it you do pick up, and where?” “Oh, anything—anywhere; I ain’t pertickler,” replied the grubby-faced young Briton, on the instant becoming lighthearted again. “But I can’t get about and do anything while it’s raining. Sometimes I works the omnibuses, like I was doing when the cab Wheel went over young Bill’s tops, and sometimes I play on the tin whistle, or I go hunting for bones and rags, or p’raps I takes my bag and goes down to the river and picks up enough coals to sell for tuppence or thrupence. It’s no use bein’ pertickler, don’t you know, when there’s two or three of ’em looking to’ids you for a Bit of witties.” And there was a look in his eyes as he spoke that any man would have been gratified to see in the eyes of a little son of his own. It was a strange etory. The poor hard-working drudge, the mother, able with her toiling from morning till night to buy only half a loaf in place oi a whole one for her ; lucky progeny; the dissolute, -lazy ■ father, who rather than work would ' rob his child of its vagabond gleanings; the ragged, sturdy, ready-witted ragamuffin, aged tenfwho stood before me, and who, according to his own account, acted the part of father and mother as well to his younger brothers and sisters day after Greenivood, in “Outcast London.” . > l -