and bodies swaying to and fro, while others sat stolid and
almost as immovable as stone, staring at the little group of men and
women in front who were to lead them in the exercises of the morning.

At length one face of the many before her fixed the eyes of Edith. It
was the face of a little boy scarcely more than three years old. He was
only a few benches from her, and had been hidden from view by a larger
boy just in front of him. When Edith first noticed this child, he was
looking at her intently from a pair of large, clear brown eyes that had
in them a wistful, hungry expression. His hair, thick and wavy, had
been smoothly brushed by some careful hand, and fell back from a large
forehead, the whiteness and smoothness of which was noticeable in
contrast with those around him. His clothes were clean and good.

As Edith turned again and again to the face of this child, the youngest
perhaps in the room, her heart began to move toward him. Always she
found him with his great earnest eyes upon her. There seemed at last to
be a mutual fascination. His eyes seemed never to move from her face;
and when she tried to look away and get interested in other faces,
almost unconsciously to herself her eyes would wander back, and she
would find herself gazing at the child.

At eleven o'clock Mr. Paulding announced that the exercises for the
morning would begin, when silence fell on the restless company of
undisciplined children. A hymn was read, and then, as the leader struck
the tune, out leaped the voices of these four hundred children, each
singing with a strange wild abandon, many of them swaying their heads
and bodies in time to the measure. As the first lines of the hymn,

"Jesus, gentle Shepherd, lead us,
Much we need thy tender care,"

swelled up from the lips of those poor neglected children, the eyes of
Edith grew blind with tears.

After a prayer was offered up, familiar addresses, full of kindness and
encouragement, were made to the children, interspersed with singing and
other appropriate exercises. These were continued for an hour. At their
close the children were taken up stairs to the two long school-rooms,
in which their dinner was to be served. Here were Christmas trees loaded
with presents, wreaths of evergreen on the walls and ceilings, and
illuminated texts hung here and there, and everything was provided to
make the day's influence as beautiful and pleasant as possible to the
poor little ones