ious ports for the very
purpose of supplying the demand for sailor boys. Doubtless they would
have done this well, but it is better still if by private effort we can
fill the ships. At any rate let us empty the prisons, the dens of
penury, and the kerb-stones, where the young and prime material, spoiling
by ignorance and neglect, wastes the vigour of our land, pesters this
generation with beggars, poor-rates, and gaols, and infects and ruins the
generation to come after.

Sweden does better by her sons. She teaches them every one, and, as a
Swede told me, "Sweden is not rich enough to keep ignorant children until
they are criminal men." Therefore she gives every one the priceless boon
of education as a national gift, so that every Swede owes at least one
debt to his country, and there are no Fenians there.

In England no one is allowed to appear in public without some clothes.
The time will come when we shall not dare to let a man loose on the
thoroughfares in native ignorance--decency forbids.

We have opened our ship-decks to foreign sailors--more proud in our boast
of being an asylum for the distressed than in preventing distress among
our own people. By all means give foreigners fair play, but _after_
England's boys are cared for. Charity begins at home, our home is
England. English boys are far better sailors than any foreigners, who no
doubt excel us in cookery and silks, and manners and despotism, but not
in the hard duty bravely done, when storms lash clouds and ocean into one
general foam.

To train up English sailor boys philanthropy stepped in just in time, and
in the last few years it has provided more and more ships. The very boys
who are worst off, and most tried by dire want and misfortune, are those
who may be boldest to run aloft when well taught; and if these British
hearts are won young, and tutored right, and trained loyal, and warmly
clothed in true blue jackets, we shall not have so many shipwrecks where
cheap foreigners skulk as the tempest roars. {296}

One day we had a grand treat for the 'Chichester' boys, who marched to a
sunny mead at Greenhithe, and romped for hours and hours in hearty
sailors' play. How they ran races, jumped in sacks, swarmed up the
polished pole, and eyed the leg of mutton at the top, far out of reach,
until sheer exhaustion with boyish laughter made them slide down! Then,
gathered round cake and tea, and duly stuffed therewith to concert pitch,
they sing o