Chapter V: Appendix: 241 (4)

If only some system could be devised by which the most suitable chaplains could be retained in the training-ships--indeed, one might go further, if it were possible, and suggest that the captain, and more especially the first-lieutenant, should be chosen for their aptitude for this kind of work, understanding the needs of boys, with a genius for discovering the methods of the instructors and the warrant-officers, the gain would be enormous. We need in England sailors perfectly trained for their work. This they will never be, unless they love their work. The first eighteen months, as a rule, either creates or mars this love. If in those eighteen months there could be a little individualising, a little less treating everybody like a machine--and this can only be done by those who have daily and hourly intercourse with the boys, as instructors in the schoolroom or in their different squads--if there could be a little sympathetic compassion and understanding of them, they would turn out much more valuable men. And this practically almost altogether depends upon the first-lieutenant, and could depend, I think, a good deal upon the chaplain.

The other difficulty is the utter loss of all idea of home. There are some boys who never come ashore from week to week, and when they do go home for their leave, so unaccustomed are they to all the gentle side of what home means, all that part of it which springs from woman’s influence, that they are very soon tired of it. You must realize that these lads of fourteen are far older in experience than lads of the same age in another class, and this eighteen months in their life is just the time when they turn from boys into men, the real turning-point; new passions, new powers, are developing every day. Body and intellect, both wholesomely treated, are developing with extraordinary rapidity, but the soul has hardly any opportunity of growth. And, therefore, the sailor oftentimes remains a boy, or rather a man who has never matured, if our manhood consist of soul as well as body and intellect. I think this was the thought which struck us most as the _St. Vincent_ boys began to use our house more and more. And very glad we were that they should use our house, for Portsmouth is not the best place for boys to be in. Whether they land at the Hard or at the Point, there is generally temptation very near them, temptation which has a special attraction for them, because they have a special desire to play the man, and manliness in certain classes is only another word for sin. Every Thursday and Saturday, their half-holidays, and every Sunday afternoon, we opened our house freely to them. We devised all kinds of amusements, and wearied ourselves with inventing sports, which were never received with very much _verve_. Our great gymnasium, of course, was always a source of joy. I remember one time, when the _Saint_ possessed the best gymnastic, football, and cricket team, I should think, in any boys’ institution in the world, when Jimmy Caulfield was lieutenant, the best fellow I ever knew with lads. We gave them a football in the gymnasium, and never realized, till the house was nearly blown up with an explosion of gas, that a football was likely to smash all the burners. Then we tried singing, with somebody to play the piano, but when the accompanist had gone away, the sailors discovered that feet produced better music than hands. This emulation to play proved a great misfortune to us, for when we locked up the piano, some of them tore away the silk which covered the front of it, and broke a lot of the keys. On Sundays, too, this music led to hymn singing. I think I objected to that more than to anything else. It seems to me nothing can be more irreverent or likely to destroy religion, than the bawling out of the most sacred words and names, without one single thought as to what they mean. I myself believe that comic songs would be far less harmful. But the fittest always survives, and we discovered, what common sense might have taught us at first, that being very much employed all the rest of their time, what they really liked best was loafing, mixed with conversation, pictures, reading, and writing home.

I have been wonderfully helped in my management of these afternoons by two men, to whom the mission owes a good deal besides, William Hays and Albert Conibeere. Urged by the former of these, we made a new departure, and asked leave that boys whom we knew, or who were recommended to us, might use our house as if it were their own home, sleeping on Saturday nights. This gave us the opportunity of speaking a word privately about religion, because any boy, whom we knew on the ship, who wanted to go to Holy Communion, could do so with more hope of preparation and of quiet than he could on board. So “Dolling’s party,” as the master-at-arms would call them as they left the ship, became an established fact. Once or twice this liberty has been abused. Once a lad used it as an opportunity for running away. Five or six times boys came home the worse for drink. But considering that for five years eight or nine lads used our house every Saturday night, except when away on leave, transgressors were extraordinarily few. Once I remember having to threaten to stop this party altogether because two boys got drunk, and we had the most piteous and abject apologies from a large number of them. As a rule, every boy had to be in at a quarter-past ten. Most of them spent all the evening in the gymnasium. If they asked leave, however, they might go to the theatre, or if they had any special friends in the town, whom I approved of, they might be a little later. Latterly those coming have been chosen by Conibeere. He kept a book in which all the boys’ antecedents were written down, the number of visits each had paid us, whether he was a Communicant, etc. The boys spending the afternoon could tell Conibeere who wanted to come, and privately whether they wanted to go to the Holy Communion. Thus I always got a chance of saying a word of advice and a word of prayer with each one, but we were most careful never to press religion, or show more hospitality to the religious; if anything we erred, perhaps, on the other side. There can be no greater danger than making religion pay, a danger, I think, into which those who manage Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Institutions are most prone to fall--a danger which often leads sailors, at any rate, into a fear of making friends with the chaplain, or of going to Communion, lest their mates should misjudge them as being crawlers or hypocrites. It is wonderful, for instance, how popular teetotalism becomes if some officer is specially interested in it, or how well a Bible Class is attended if patronised by some one in authority. This oftentimes is a great stumbling-block to the modest man, who is really religious, and yet is afraid of his religion being misunderstood by his mates.

And if you ask me about the after results of all this labour, I am afraid I can say very little. Sailors seldom, or never, write. I have known lads use our house continually for eighteen months, then be ordered abroad, and walk in in three years’ time, saying, “Oh, I lost your address,” or “I didn’t know what to say, so didn’t write.” And then they would use the house again as if they had only left it yesterday, very likely showing us that they had thought about us by bringing us some impossible gifts--“curios” they would call them--sometimes a monkey, sometimes a bird; oftentimes astonishing me by coming into my study on Saturday night, and talking about their Communion the next day, with a wonderful, simple story of their difficulties, perhaps of their sins. And yet, in spite of all their temptations, there was a remembrance of God, which I believe at any rate they had partly learned from us. But, dear friend, surely all statistics are abominable, and especially religious statistics, so I prefer to give none.

Of course, amongst the older sailors we could hope to do very little, unless they actually lived in the parish. They are very much a race by themselves, and don’t mix well with civilians, and, as we had neither men nor plant, we dared not in any way add to our responsibilities by opening a Home for them, though I doubt if there is any disgrace for which the Church of England deserves to suffer more than the fact that there is no Church of England Sailors’ Home in Portsmouth. One would think that shame, if no higher motive, would compel her to try and do her duty towards her sailors. But if she fails, there is one name that ought never to be mentioned without thanksgiving to Almighty God for her unceasing labour, and her truest and tenderest devotion to Jack ashore or afloat, the name of Agnes Weston. Her Home, close to my own parish, is worked on the most admirable lines in all secular matters, excellent food and sleeping accommodation, and, above all, personal kindness and sympathy. She has, too, a very bold and broad view of many measures by which the Service could be benefited, and a very able and willing tongue to express them either in public or in private, at drawing-room meetings or before a Committee of the House of Commons. Perhaps there is no one in England to whom the nation owes a deeper debt of gratitude, for a real elevation on the part of a most important factor in the nation’s welfare and prosperity, than to Miss Weston.

And if there is any man who needs such a resting-place, and especially in the good town of Portsmouth, it is the sailor. Quiet as it may seem in the daytime, there are few worse streets at night in the whole world than Queen Street, Portsea. I am sure there are no courts in the world worse than those which crowd around it. I am sure there are no characters worse than those which infest it. If the Admiralty will only gather statistics from our Naval Hospitals as to the health of our sailors, and put themselves in correspondence with the authorities of Chatham, Plymouth, and Portsmouth, I am sure a tremendous reformation could be effected. The Admiralty and the municipalities, working together, could bring great influence to bear upon the licensing magistrates as to the number of public-houses, and their character, and upon the police authorities to vigorously put in motion the existing law as regards common decency in the streets. Why, because you have gathered into one place a large number of young, unmarried men, specially prone to temptation by the very manner of their life, should almost every house in a neighbourhood which they are bound to pass through, offer temptation? If England has no nobler incentive for this reformation, her own safety, depending upon the health of her sailors, might, at any rate, move and compel her. I am conscious that these words may wound many of my friends in Portsmouth, but I cannot refrain from writing them.

I have said that the sailor often remains a boy. There is no greater proof of this than the imprudent manner in which very often he marries; often when he has known the girl only a very few weeks, and has no knowledge of her antecedents, hardly of her disposition. Sometimes I have even known sailors marry those whom they knew had been bad characters. And if you ask him the reason, “Oh! the girl was unhappy; I thought I would make a home for her”; or, “I was afraid she might go wrong”; or even, “I wanted someone to leave my half-pay with.” Marriages made like this, as you may guess, do not always turn out happily, sometimes not well; especially as the man is often away three years at a time. For, after all, the half-pay is too often very little--seven and sixpence or ten shillings a week, paid monthly, the first payment seldom being received before he has been away two months, which means that the poor girl gets into frightful debt before she receives anything. I believe that in the Mercantile Marine a woman can always get an advance note cashed. I trace back many grievous misunderstandings between husbands and wives, many children in semi-starvation, the first downward step in pawning, borrowing money at usurious rates, getting into such difficulties that only the most hateful remedy, which I dare not mention here, was possible, all to this difficulty of payment. Then, too, the sum, when received, is, if the woman has children, utterly inadequate. Surely the nation is bound to see that it is not so. It is for her sake that the sailor’s wife and children are separated from the husband, that he has to keep a kind of dual establishment. And believe me, the nation cannot get rid of the responsibility by saying he ought not to have married. It is for your sake he is separated from his wife and family. It is for your sake that they are in poverty. I don’t write these words lightly or inadvisedly. I have seen, over and over again, homes without food, children without clothes, wives without hope. I have come in more than once just in time to stop the wife earning money by the only method open to her.

And if the wife cries out and shames you, the widow of the sailor is, without exception, the greatest of England’s disgraces. Even when the nation’s pity becomes universal, and money flows in like water, as in the case of the _Victoria_, the charity of the nation is strangled by the red tape of an Official Commission. I myself prevented starvation in more than one house which should have been sacred to England, and I believe that if it had not been for Miss Weston, many would actually have died of starvation. The cruelty of the methods--they were actually contemplating using the police to make investigations; the tardiness of the relief given--they made Miss Weston’s generosity an excuse, and the niggardliness of the pittance to be doled out, until public opinion forced them to increase it, should create a national scandal. The Commission has over and over again received money for a certain purpose, and not used it, but rather hoarded it up. I thank God I have been summoned to give evidence before a Parliamentary Commission, now enquiring into this soulless corporation, bereft of all bowels of compassion. The enormous sum of money given to its charge for providing for the wives and others dependent on old Crimean warriors is so tied up, that although at the death of every present pensioner there will be a surplus of over £70,000, yet countless widows of Crimean soldiers, and Crimean soldiers themselves, are living and dying in the workhouse; and though, some years ago, a sum of over £7000 was released from its original trust, and they were enabled to apply this in pensions for sailors and soldiers who died in active service, or in consequence of wounds or illness incurred in active service, they have never discovered one pensioner yet, though I suppose the _Edgar_ disaster was known to every man and woman in England except the Commissioners. What one hopes to see is the creation of a new trust, which, by means of humane and competent Christian persons, should discover anyone who is entitled, by the death of a relative, to help from any special fund. When these have been liberally dealt with, the surplus should be the nucleus of a great pension fund for all sailors and soldiers. From the liberality with which appeals for the _Victoria_ disaster were responded to, I have no doubt that the heart of England is perfectly sound on this question. Above all, let humane Christian hearts be the channels through which England’s generosity pays back her debt to those who suffer so gallantly for her sake.

And yet happy is the widow of the man who died in the _Victoria_, in comparison with the widow of him who dies while freeing slaves in Africa, or falls overboard when, in a storm, he is performing some delicate work. There is literally no provision for her. His mates will buy his poor kit for four times its worth, will put the same object up for auction over and over again until it has reached a fabulous value, will tax themselves beyond all justice in order to send home money to the widow. But the nation will let his children be vagabonds, and beg their bread. Yea, they may even seek it in desolate places, until the extortioner consumes all that he hath, and the stranger spoil his labours. And that because he gave himself for England’s peace and for England’s glory. Only three months ago a young fellow died on one of the ships in the Mediterranean. His mates knew that he was going to marry a girl when he came home, and that he had already had a child by her. They collected privately amongst themselves over £40, which they sent me. I have said sailors are like boys. God bless them for their youthfulness of heart, full of generosity, and full of the tenderest sympathy and most delicate understanding for every sorrow and for every pain.

At the present moment we are going to expend many millions on building new ships. We may need them. But we certainly do need a great deal more--a great increase in every branch of the Service, especially amongst the stokers. I doubt if at this present moment we can man the ships we have A very excellent attempt has been made in the direction of such increase in the case of the _Northampton_. Many of my own lads have been on her, and so I can speak with authority of a most splendid experiment. It takes in the lad who did not quite come up to the necessary chest measurement at the proper age, or who was suffering from some superficial complaint now cured, or whose parents were an invincible obstacle, and yet who always wanted to become a sailor. I believe the shorter training they get on board, because of their increased age, fits them for their work very nearly as well as the longer training. Let us have two _Northamptons_, then three, then four. You will easily find recruits. Then roll away the reproach from our Dockyard towns; remove, as far as you can, temptation from the younger sailor’s life; give him a reasonable chance of promotion, and treat all branches equally. The time is coming when the stoker and engineer will be the chief men on board. The sooner this is recognised on the quarter-deck, as well as on the main deck, the better. Show him he can give adequate support to his wife and family, and that, if he dies, the nation will not forget her; and I do not think you need have any fear at all about being able to man the biggest fleet the Jingoes may desire to build. The smell of the sea is the atmosphere in which Englishmen live. The enthusiasm of travel, the spirit of enterprise, the unknown with its dangers, has a strange attraction for every Englishman, and no life supplies this as well as the sailor’s life.

Very difficult though it was for them, many officers have helped us very considerably. One, now a lieutenant in China, and another, a lieutenant of Marines, will always be held by me in grateful remembrance for their help amongst our most difficult class of boys. But, of course, in a house like ours, it was very difficult for officers to feel exactly at home, for they would very likely have to share meals with men on board their own ships, and though snobbishness hardly exists among naval officers, there was a very great practical difficulty created by necessary discipline.

IX.

=Our Saints.=

The sight of true heroism is the best incentive to learn to be heroic oneself, a virtue, as you may guess, greatly needed in a house like ours. The heroism of the soldier who dies on the battle-field is as nothing compared with the true heroism of one who endures long agonies of pain and suffering without murmur, who prays in the morning, “Oh, that it were evening,” and in the evening, “Oh, that it were morning.” Oftentimes it is this sight which is the only witness for God in the lives of the poor. “It is expedient that one man die for the people.” And God granted to us, during several years of our work, this sight of a living death. His father had been a staff-sergeant in the army, but his mother had married again into great poverty and distress. He had struggled as a tram-conductor as long as there was breath in his body, and then crawled into a wretched bed in a wretched room, shared with other members of his family, to die without one single comfort, one alleviation of all his intolerable pain. But even this loneness in the midst of his own was forbidden him, and impatiently he was told to go to the workhouse to die. I shall never forget his look of thankfulness, when I said, “If you don’t mind the noise and racket of our house, come and die with us.” And as he crossed our threshold the spirit of peace came with him; and I think it has never altogether passed away. The good food and wine, and better medical attendance, above all, the loving unceasing attention of Mary, our housekeeper, brought him back again from the grave. He lived altogether six years with us, every summer strengthening into a little activity of body, tending our little garden across the street, sometimes almost crawling there on his hands and knees. The very flowers seemed to know him; they have never grown so luxuriantly since. Surely flowers recognise love more quickly than men, and respond to it more truly. But then the whole house was his garden, and so gently, and wisely, and lovingly did he treat the roughest and most degraded, that they all seemed to respond to the magic of his touch. Oftentimes, when the whole house was in bed, he would crawl down from his room to tell me of someone’s trouble which his love had discovered. Through all the winter he was in agonies of pain, dreading every breath, and yet welcoming each breath lest he should suffocate; above all things utterly unconscious of his own influence, until the day of his death bewailing the expense and trouble that he was to others, never measuring that in a true and real sense he was God’s angel of peace dwelling amongst us, for it often seemed to us as if one single breath would have carried him to that resting-place which he needed so grievously. No pleasure was so great in those hours of agony, when he could not speak or move, as to know that some poor obstinate, hopeless one, was learning the only lesson his dull soul could learn by watching his pain. So trusted was he that everyone in all the house gave their money into his care, not only the boys, but myself as well, for he kept all the Parish Collections, until they were large enough to go down to the bank. No one would have dared to have stolen from him. And then when the end was very near, and the last Sacrament had been received, he asked to be left alone. After a quarter of an hour or so I opened, as silently as I could, the door, and found him kneeling beside his bed praying as I thought his last prayer; but he had learned that divinest of all secrets, that prayer must perfect itself in service, and so his poor death-chilled hands had gathered each one’s little money into its own heap, lest he should even seem to have been unfaithful. As we carried him through the streets to the church the night before his funeral, there was not a dry eye in all the parish. All the next morning when the Masses for his repose were being said, the church was crowded as on a Sunday, factory girls and Dockyar-dmen giving up their day’s work. His memory was perpetuated in the new church by the beautifying of the little altar, which in the old church he had loved so well, for the people had collected over £14 for that purpose. Ah! would that Bishop Thorold had lived only two months longer, for his eyes filled with tears, and his heart, so long a parish priest’s, could realise exactly the importance of such a memory.

Shall I tell you of another of our saints? If some ten years ago you had passed down the Hard at Portsmouth, you would have seen William Dore, a mudlark, searching for pennies in the filthy mud of the harbour for the amusement of good-natured stupids, who throw them to such-like boys. Thus he earned the pennies which were eagerly taken from him when he gained his home. He was what our boys would call a little “off,” else he would not have been so imposed on by a wretched step-father. The mother, blind and paralysed, lying on a few rags in a corner of the room, strove to put some thoughts of decency into two wayward girls--one older and one younger than Willie--earning, as girls do in that part of Portsmouth, sometimes a shilling or sixpence a night, and yet with a curious pathos striving to keep from the blind mother the knowledge of how it was earned. There is a court near called White’s Row, the most disgraceful place in that most disgraceful part of the town; but it is redeemed by a little chapel belonging to the mother church of Holy Trinity, where Mr. Marriott, I think, first, and afterwards Mr. Lloyd, attracted Willie. He was one of those extraordinary natures in whom religion seems to come spontaneously; for they had hardly taught him one fact when he seemed to have grasped the whole of religion. The first consequence was that he must leave his home. He had become too old to be a mudlark. The only other living open to him was a kind of hanging about and picking up odd sixpences from people whom he knew, money which was gained by sin. Then the mother died, so he came to us altogether. Whether it was inherited from her, or due to the awful exposure of his early years, the nerves of his eyes weakened, and he too became blind. But I think the pathos of his blindness was almost as great an influence for good as Ross’s more apparent suffering. His one idea, to give amusement, was his method of repaying the little we did for him, and so he would learn comic songs, and sing them after dinner. Often when he knew I was troubled, I would hear his tap at the door, for he could find his way everywhere about the house, and he would say, “I think I could make you laugh if you would let me sing”; and then he would put his hands upon your head, just as a little child would do, and say, “Your head is better now.” It is such faith that works miracles of healing to-day. Sometimes strange boys in the house, who did not know him, would gibe at him, or, with the horrid cruelty of boys, because he was blind, push or pinch him. Then a burst of ungoverned temper, and then an equal terror of remorse. I have found him oftentimes lying on the floor in front of the altar, having groped his way into church in penitence for these sins. His one desire, to do something for the Mission, was gratified by allowing him to become organ-blower, though, indeed, it was an arrangement open to objection, especially when there were strangers in the church. He sat in a place in which everybody saw him, and his poor blind eyes staring into the unknown, and his thick-lipped mouth forming all manner of grimace as he sang, moved people almost to laughter. We never knew how he learned psalms and hymns and chants. I have thought myself that some angel must have taught him. During catechising, too, when all the rest of the school had failed, Willie could nearly always give the correct answer. God did not will that he should die with us, for at last the doctor said that he must go to the imbecile ward in the union. The day before he died, coming out of a trance of many hours, he said, “Give my love to the Sunday School children; tell them I have answered every question,” and then drawing my head quite close down to his mouth, “You will wear the black cope at my funeral.”

“There is a little boy just come into Alfred Street,” the district visitor said one day. “He is fourteen, but he looks like a child of five, and lives and sleeps in a little perambulator. There is no one to look after him, for his mother is in a lunatic asylum, and his father goes out at six in the morning, and does not come back till night.” And so exactly I found him, our dear little Harry, all alone in this dark room in his perambulator, and on a little shelf, which his poor twisted hands could reach, his cold and wretched meals apportioned for the day. At first when we brought him to the house he was very timid and very nervous, but he soon brightened up. He never really lived with us, for his father loved him so dearly that he had to go home at night to be with him, but he was with us all day, and his little tender thread was soon woven into the woof of our common life, and on all our rough people his influence was as the influence of a little child. Sometimes, when all else fails, the roughest beasts are led by a little child. His face would wince with pain, when any boy spoke harshly to another, and I have come in and found him almost in an agony of fear, when some rough horse-play was going on amongst them. I am sure Dr. Fearon will never forget wheeling him in his little perambulator up to the altar, to be confirmed by the Bishop. I do not think I have ever seen such devotion to the Blessed Sacrament as in that little soul. In it he saw not only Jesus, but our Father, and even heaven as well. Strange, wonderful stories he told me of what he had seen there, for sometimes he would doze all day by the fire in the dining-room, in my study, or in Mary’s kitchen, and then only say, “I was dreaming of the Blessed Sacrament. Do you think someone would wheel me to Mass to-morrow morning?” I remember so well kissing away the last tears I saw in his eyes, as he held up in his little shrunken hands some woollen slippers, which he had made for me, a little secret for my birthday, and found that there was not work enough done, and then fell back saying, “I shall never live to finish them,” and died that night.

These were but a few of the saints who have influenced our home. But out in the parish there were just as saintly lives lived, women’s lives, so we could not bring them in to die with us. Moore’s Square is the most unhealthy spot in our district. It has never been free from typhoid fever since I went there, and it is no wonder, for there are slaughter-houses all round it. All of the houses are poor and squalid, and more or less out of repair. Martha lived in the Square. Her husband was a rough sailor, who coasted about. Often away from home he would get converted, and clergymen would write to me about him, but he generally signalled his return with an outburst of drunkenness. More than once I have known all the furniture broken up, and once her arm badly burnt, because a lighted paraffin lamp had been knocked down. She had never heard anything about religion, till she came into church by chance one day and heard me preaching about the Blessed Sacrament. Very often our sermons consisted of saying the same thing over and over again, and this day I was speaking of the Sacrament as “the Blood of God.” I must have said the words very often, for she came round to my house that night to ask me if it was really true that God had shed His very Blood for her. It was a revelation to her of a love so pure and so true, a love that had forced the Eternal out of compassion for us to take to Himself Blood that he might shed it for our sakes. She could neither read nor write, and as she was suffering from cancer, she had not much time to learn. Once she was operated on, and as she went off under the chloroform she whispered to me, “God’s Blood.” But it soon began to grow again, and day by day we could see her bodily strength decaying; such horrid decay. When you read the lives of the Saints you think that kissing the sores of the lepers is an exaggeration, but it is being done continually by the poor for the poor. Their rough hands are soothed to tenderest nursing, and their rude, vulgar, boisterous ways taught true refinement by the compassion which they feel. Hers was a very tedious case, and neighbours have children of their own, and cannot watch all day, though oftentimes all night, and so the little daughter of twelve, who would rather have been playing than tending her mother, was tied to the table. One day a neighbour, hearing cries, ran in, and the child explained, “Mother is silly: she is crying for the Blood of God.” How grateful I was that the Blessed Sacrament was reserved that day! It was in truth her “viaticum.”

We could never make out why, however ill she was, an old woman--Maria I will call her--would never allow us to go up to her bedroom. She was always huddled up in a little chair, covered with a thin old shawl; sometimes one doubted whether there was anything beneath it. She was quite a lady, with a beautiful pinched face, bright cheerful eyes, yet so sunken that the light was as stars seen from a well. So gracious, always doing the honours of her little home, and yet so reticent about the room upstairs; till one day suddenly taken ill at night, a neighbour discovered she had no bed--had not had one for many years. She had kept a little school, and many of the women round had been her pupils; she could not bear that they should know she needed, else they would stint themselves for her. I shall never forget how she kissed my hands the first time I saw her in the bed we got for her, and said, “I pray God you may never be as thankful for a bed as I am for this.” And then, after a little while, when we passed by, she would not let us in, saying, “I can go to church and hear you, so I won’t trouble you to-day. I know you are very busy.” And the same thing to the district visitors, till my sister Geraldine, who, because she is the shortest, is the bravest of us all, found the bed was pawned. The poor old lady held down her head, and looked so ashamed, and would not talk about it, till a man across the street cried out, “That d----d ruffian of a grandson came out of gaol the other day, and has pawned it.” Not only did he pawn the bed, but, by his badness, he drove her to such sorrow that she lost all hope; her old body could bear no more, and, falling downstairs, she was wounded past recovery. The neighbours called in the police, but the old woman’s last words were--“He did not push me.” But though the coroner and jury acquitted him, the neighbours look askance at him to-day.

Many cases like this forced upon me the need of some kind of alms-houses, where I could put old ladies whose only other home was the workhouse. And so we turned the cottages standing on the intended site of the new church into homes for five or six old ladies, and when these had to be pulled down we bought other ones, so that the Mission possesses to-day twelve houses, in which five old couples and nine or ten old ladies live. It has been a part of our work most blessed; and as I have never been able to get away, owing to stress of work, for the last five years, and people have kindly given me money for my holidays, this holiday money has bought most of the alms-houses. Dear old ladies, I wonder if they miss me to-day as much as I miss them. I believe the purest happiness I have ever had in all my whole life is knowing and seeing their happiness. The houses are all freehold, and the old souls pay sixpence or a shilling a week, so there is enough to pay taxes and repairs, sometimes even a balance over. Granny is not always honoured in England as she is in Germany; she does not always get the warmest seat by the fire, or the first helping from the dish; she is sometimes the drudge of the whole family; minding the baby and the little children; even when her head is splitting, the children with that shrill voice which discovers every aching nerve, cry, “It is only granny, she does not matter.” Sometimes, when the house is full, she is put in the corner, where, in the days far gone, she used to put that strong, stalwart man, who now does not take the trouble to defend her.

Thank God, the workhouse is far more humane to-day in England than it was, but the remembrance of what it was, has left a feeling, a sentiment, if you like to call it so, which renders it abhorrent to every honest and earnest man and woman. I pray God the time is coming when we shall recognise out-door relief a great deal more. The Portsmouth Guardians were wonderfully good in this respect; they tried to keep people out of the house by allowing out-door relief. And I cannot speak in too high praise of the parish doctor, Mr. Colt, and our two relieving officers, Mr. Gardiner and Mr. Vine. There is no man more admirable than the conscientious poor-law doctor. Think of attending people who never obey any of your directions, who take your medicine three doses at a time, and then come for more, who send for you continually. And though our Union was, I think, as good as most--I was on the Board of Guardians for a considerable time--I wonder whether any of us Guardians would desire to go into it ourselves. Thank God we have now four or five lady Guardians in Portsmouth, who will do for the women and children what we never could do. I remember discovering after weeks of visiting in the schools, hideous and horrid things that a woman’s eye would have seen at once. I had to see three girls who were going out to service. I noticed they used their aprons instead of their pocket-handkerchiefs, and when I made enquiries, thinking this would be an obstacle to their becoming servants, they told me that they were only allowed pocket-handkerchiefs one day in the year, when they went out for their annual treat. One day at four o’clock I found them all at tea, and floating on the top of the liquid so called were lumps of grease and fat. I discovered that they had eaten their dinner of soup at one o’clock, and that tea was being served in the same porringer. A little lad broke his arm on a Saturday, and though he was bathed and dressed by the attendants, it was not known till the Tuesday. Indeed, the whole system of the schools was wrong. They ought to have been in the country, miles away from the main house. Better still, the children ought to have been boarded out. I doubt if any institutions for children are right, but I have no doubt at all that our present barrack-system is altogether inhuman and scandalous. And the same thing might be said of the Infirmary, in which there were several hundred patients, and only one trained nurse to look after them. The very sick and dying were left to the tender mercies of any old porter who had wit enough to gain a few extra pence by becoming a wardsman or wardswoman. Difficult surgical cases were nursed by these utterly inefficient persons; people were left to die alone, without anyone to moisten their lips. I am very proud to think that this has been mended now, and that there are certified nurses, though, perhaps, not yet a sufficient number.

The real difficulty of the whole workhouse system consists in the want of classification. There are numbers of people who spend their lives in workhouses, going from one to another. In many cases the Union is actually a premium on idleness. You and I cannot imagine a man who could like this sort of life, but such people will remain with us, until there is some system of registration, some method by which those, who are just entering on the life, may be checked and stopped at the critical moment, when a helping hand would prevent them becoming casuals. Above all we must separate from these loafers those who are forced in old age to go into the workhouse. A great deal, I know, is being done, but it is all being done in an institutional way, without any individualising, without any humanity. If there is one place in the world where the miserable divisions amongst Christian people are most manifest, it is in the workhouse. It is this, I am sure, that prevents it being worked on a Christian method. The Church of England would be jealous if it were done by Dissenters, the Dissenters equally jealous if it were done by the Church of England. So long as this ministering to the poor, which is the highest and most Christ-like of all Christian duties, is done by officials, it cannot ever be done in a Christian way to any extent, though I know, of course, there are many exceptions. And however desirous the officials are under present circumstances, there rises the question of the rates, rates managed by Guardians, who are often recklessly extravagant in all the outward part of their organisation, which is seen by the public, and shockingly mean as regards the small expenditure which makes all the difference between comfort and discomfort.

Honestly, one’s deepest disappointment about the working man, is his utter want of interest and understanding at all times of municipal and other elections. The new method of electing Guardians may alter this, but I very much doubt it. I suppose it is wrong to be impatient with people only recently enfranchised, and, perhaps, not yet understanding their responsibilities; but surely it is the part of the clergy to preach, in season and out of season, the grave duty of every man who has a vote for an office in the town in which he lives, that every man must recognise that God will hold him responsible for that vote, and that, if he gives it wrongly, it will be no excuse that his political club, or the kindly Primrose lady, advised him so to give it. I am very grateful indeed for the experience I gained both on the Board of Guardians and on the School Board. It brought me in contact with many men of very different opinions to my own, who treated me with great kindness and consideration, and for the majority of whom I entertain a very deep and true respect. But sometimes I could not help feeling that on the School Board we were not all educationalists, and on the Board of Guardians some were rather the guardians of the rates than the guardians of the poor. Above all, the expenses of management and the creation of plant were altogether out of proportion to the amount expended on the objects which we had in view. I venture to hope that the day is not far distant when that fetish of red tape, which strangles almost all English enthusiasm, will cease to dominate us, and when simple Christian common sense will become the method by which, at any rate, two of the most important of our duties, the educating of our children and the caring for our poor, are carried out. But it will not be done until electors choose the best man for either post--the only consideration being to get the best man--and we rid ourselves of that hateful thought that everyone desires some gain, either for himself, or for the church or party to which he belongs, by taking office.

And surely, if every citizen has his municipal duty, he has an imperial duty as well. I know that many people were very displeased with me, because I took what is called an active part in politics. Does a doctor or a lawyer cease to be a politician because he has got clients? Why then should a clergyman, because he has got parishioners? I quite hold that it would be wrong for him to canvass or to influence his people privately as to their votes; but I believe, on the other hand, that if he is conscious that he has anything to say worth saying on the question of politics, or that might help his neighbours to form a truer, better, or nobler judgment on these questions, it is his bounden duty to say it. This was a policy I always endeavoured to pursue. I never once asked a single person to vote my way, but I did, when opportunity occurred, go upon the platform and tell people what my opinions were, and I am not the least ashamed of having done so.

X.

=Our Battles Civil.=

If I have ventured, in the last chapter, to speak of the duty which everyone owes to the town in which he lives, I fear that, for several years of my work in Portsmouth, I was very oblivious of this duty. The labour and watchfulness needed to try and cleanse our own little district made one forget the larger, but less apparent, duty. Indeed, many of my brethren felt that I had rendered their work more difficult, by uprooting dangers from my own district which located themselves in theirs. There is much, of course, to be said for this line of thought, but self-preservation is one’s first instinct, and if, in preserving myself and my own children, I have wronged others, I am sorry for it. But I do not think that I had ever let one day pass, in Portsmouth, without praying that I might realise the grave responsibility which rested on every inhabitant, and I believed especially on the clergy. I had tried, in preaching to men alone on Sunday afternoons, to speak out quite plainly on these social subjects, and this had brought me into contact with most of the labour leaders. For a long time all labour reform, in Portsmouth, was a great difficulty, for the Dockyard did not welcome its workers joining Trade Societies. However, thank God, that reproach has all been rolled away, and I believe myself the day is not far distant when employers will find that the men’s Unions are really a great gain in the solution of the whole Labour Question. Everything that tends to make the working man more intelligent and more self-reliant, is a tremendous gain, and there is no doubt that the better hours which men work, and the better wages, have this tendency. Of course, there are two dangers--first, as the Unions grew stronger, they had a tendency to look at all questions merely from the workman’s point of view, and, secondly, there was a danger of the individual wasting his increased wages and leisure in bad ways. In all acts of emancipation the first enjoyment of liberty may turn to licence, but such licence never lasts very long, and, I think, looking back over the last thirty years’ history of the Labour Question in England, one might say that this licence has almost never existed. At any rate, I was continually struck with the enthusiasm for righteousness that I discovered amongst the majority of the leading working men with whom I was brought in contact. I saw how keenly they recognised that though the creation of character was the chief thing to be aimed at, yet the creation of character, amidst temptations touching one at every single moment, added enormous difficulties to the education of every right-minded young man and woman. A great deal of cant has been talked about what is called the “Nonconformist Conscience,” and I am quite willing to believe that many of those most _en evidence_ have, by their want of tact, and, I would add, want of true understanding of the working man, prejudiced the British public. But I can testify to this fact, that every word I uttered in Portsmouth on these subjects, was, in a large measure, but the echo of earnest words said to me, and prayers prayed with me, by working men, who were almost always, I say it with shame as a priest of the Church of England, Nonconformists. Why are these men not in communion with our Church? Surely that is the most important question for those in authority in the Church to ask themselves. The answer is not a difficult one. For their fathers and for themselves the Church of England has practically forbidden all work. They are trained in their own denominations to be class-leaders, itinerant preachers, to visit the sick, often to govern the chapel as elders. They are on a perfect equality with their minister, they tell him plainly what they think about him, and the needs of the men amongst whom they live. In years gone by their forbears suffered for what they held to be the truth; the remembrance of that suffering is bred in the bone of the children. But for all those who are interested in the Labour Question, there can be no thought so full of thankfulness to God, and of hope for the future, as the knowledge that the vast majority of labour leaders are deeply religious men.