en we reached the common the child should be called 'Deliverance.'
I have been told that this sounds like the name of a new ironclad, and
perhaps it would have done as well for one as for the other. The tents
were much of a character--some kind of stitched-together rags thrown over
sticks. Our visit was made on a fine day, when it was not particularly
cold, and the first tent we came to had been opened at the top. We
looked over (these tents are only about five feet high), and beheld six
children, the eldest being a girl of about eight or ten. The father was
anywhere to suit the imagination, and the mother was away hawking. These
children, sitting on the ground with a fire in the middle of them, were
making clothes-pegs. The process seemed simple. The sticks are chopped
into the necessary lengths and put into a pan of hot water. This I
suppose swells the wood and loosens the bark. A child on the other side
takes out the sticks as they are done and bites off the bark with its
teeth. Then there is a boy who puts tin round them, and so the work goes
on. When the day is done they look for the mother coming home from
hawking with anything she may have picked up. When they have devoured
such scraps and pickings as are brought, they lie down where they have
worked and as they are, and go to sleep. It is a wonderful and
mysterious arrangement of Providence that they can sleep. They have only
a rag between them and the snow. A good wind would blow their homes over
the trees. I do not wish to make any particularly violent remarks, but I
should like some of the comfortable clergymen of your neighbourhood, when
they have done buying their toys and presents for young friends at
Christmas, to walk to Mitcham Common and see how the children are there.
They would then find out what humbugs they are, and how it is they do the
work of the Master. One tent is very much like another. We visited
about half-a-dozen, and we then went to name the child. We stayed in
this tent for about ten minutes. It was inhabited by two families,
numbering in all about twenty. I talked a little time with the woman
lying on the ground, and she uncovered the baby to show it to me. I do
not know whether it is a boy or a girl, but 'Deliverance' will do for
either one or the other. She asked me to write the name on a piece of
paper, and I did so. With a few words, as jolly as we could make them,
we crawled out, thanks and blessings following