Surely there can
be no family conversation where they live. Surely they never hear the
great questions of the day discussed at the dinner-table. From the
number of hours they spend upon the street, I often am tempted to say,
what the poor, tired woman, who stood for miles in the street-car,
said to her fellow-passengers, "Have none of yez _homes_?"
Poor, empty-pated little creatures! Poor lovely little clothes-racks,
who occasionally organize a concert for newsboys whose lives are
busier and more useful than their own! A Street Waifs' Benefit for
Street Waifs!
If the crude young person who stands with such eager feet where the
brook and river meet that she has wetted her pretty shoon in her haste
to be in the society of men could only have the wit to sing:
"O wad some power the giftie gie us,
To see oursels as others see us,"
she might discover strange points of resemblance between herself and a
very young baby.
In the earliest days of earthly existence a baby is in a jelly-fish
state, from which no one can say what he will emerge. His brain is a
sponge. He receives everything and gives nothing. He is pretty to look
at, and seems made for nothing but love. He coos and gurgles, he
seldom does anything more intelligent than to smile, and he prefers
men to women.
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