ment from the beginning. This journey occupies
the greater portion of the summer months; and after a long trip in the
steerage of a sailing-vessel, the unfortunate children land at Castle
Garden. As the parents never hear from them again, they do not know
whether they are doing well or not.

"'They are too young and ignorant to know how to get themselves
delivered from oppression; they do not speak our language, and find
little or no sympathy among the people whom they annoy. They are
thus left to the mercy of their masters, who treat them brutally, and
apparently without fear of the law or any of its officers. They are
crowded into small, ill-ventilated, uncarpeted rooms, eighteen or twenty
in each, and pass the night on the floor, with only a blanket to protect
them from the severity of the weather. In the mornings they are fed by
their temporary guardian with maccaroni, served in the filthiest manner
in a large open dish in the centre of the room, after which they are
turned out into the streets to beg or steal until late at night.

"'More than all this, when the miserable little outcasts return to their
cheerless quarters, they are required to deliver every cent which they
have gathered during the day; and if the same be deemed insufficient,
the children are carefully searched and soundly beaten.

"'The children are put through a kind of training in the arts of
producing discords on their instruments, and of begging, in the whole of
which the cruelty of the masters and the stolid submission of the pupils
are the predominant features. The worst part of all is that the children
become utterly unfitted for any occupation except vagrancy and theft.'

"You have the answer to your question, 'Where do all these little
wretches come from?'" said the missionary as he laid aside the paper
from which he had been reading. "Poor little slaves!"

CHAPTER XXII.

_EDITH'S_ life, as we have seen, became lost, so to speak, in charities.
Her work lay chiefly with children, She was active in mission-schools
and in two or three homes for friendless little ones, and did much to
extend their sphere of usefulness. Her garments were plain and sombre,
her fair young face almost colorless, and her aspect so nun-like as
often to occasion remark.

Her patience and tender ways with poor little children, especially
with the youngest, were noticed by all who were associated with her.
Sometimes she would show unusual interest in a