ion have given her the freedom of
the City. Thus her life will end in the knowledge that she has gained
the only honours worth having, those which have not been sought.

PRISONERS AND CAPTIVES

I am afraid you will think this a sad story, and so it is, but things
would have been sadder still but for the man I am going to tell you
about. His name was John Howard, and if you were to ask, 'Which John
Howard?' the answer would be, 'John Howard the Philanthropist,' which
means 'a lover of men.'

* * * * *

It is a great title for anyone to win, and no one ever earned it more
truly than this son of the rich upholsterer of Smithfield, born in
Clapton, then a country village of the parish of Hackney, in 1727. As
you will see by and by, Howard spent the last seventeen years of his
life in fighting three giants who were very hard to beat, named
Ignorance, Sloth, and Dirt; and it is all the more difficult to overcome
them because they are generally to be met with together. Unfortunately,
they never can be wholly killed, for when you think they are left dead
on the field after a hard struggle, they always come to life again; but
they have never been quite so strong since the war waged on them by John
Howard, who died fighting against them in a Russian city.

* * * * *

Howard had always been a delicate boy, which made it all the more
wonderful that he could bear the fatigue of the long journeys which he
undertook to help people who could not help themselves. He was married
twice, but neither of his wives lived long, and he had only one little
boy to look after. But when the child was four years old, Howard felt
that it was dull for him to be alone with his father, and without any
play-fellows, so he sent him to a small school kept by some ladies,
where little John, or 'Master Howard,' as it was the fashion to call
him, would be well taken care of.

Howard was a quiet man, and very religious, but, what was rare in those
times, he did not believe everybody in the wrong who thought differently
from himself. He lived quietly among his books on a small estate he
owned near Bedford, called Cardington, where he studied astronomy and
questions about heat and cold, and when only twenty-nine was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society. Medicine always interested him, and he
learned enough of it to be very useful to him during his travels;
indeed, it was owing to his