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the bed-clothes, sobbing, "O Susie, Susie, do open your eyes and speak to me once more, and let me tell you all about this dreadful money; I won't keep it, I hate it," she added passionately tugging at the bosom of her ragged frock, and at last dashing a little bundle to the floor.

The teacher had not paid much attention to what Elfie was saying, for the clergyman was speaking to her, asking what was to be done with Susie, who was evidently suffering from want and privation. The room was bitterly cold, and the first thing to be done was to send Elfie to buy some coals and wood, and then, when the fire was lighted, for some milk and a loaf of bread.

While the teacher was lighting the fire, and the minister cutting some slices of bread from the loaf, Susie slowly opened her eyes and looked round her. Elfie saw the change, and the next moment was kneeling at her side. "O Susie, Susie, I almost forgot; but Jesus saved me from being quite a thief again. As soon as ever I saw you, I remembered what you said, and threw the money down."

"Poor Elfie," said Susie in a whisper; and then becoming conscious of the fire and candle light, and the presence of others in the room, she said in a frightened tone, "What is it, Elfie?"

But Elfie was pushed aside, and the teacher came forward with a little warm milk in a cup, and gave a few spoonfuls to Susie. The first was poured down her throat; but she took the rest eagerly, and then whispered, "More, please."

The minister could not bear to look at that pale, famished face, and turned away to crumble some of the bread into the milk, and urged Elfie to eat some. Elfie, however, could talk of nothing but money, it seemed, and so at length the minister said, "What is this you are talking about-what money have you stolen ?"

"O sir, I didn't think about stealing when you sent me for the candle. I promised Susie I never would steal again; but when I saw what a lot of money there was, and you thought it was only sixpence, I took it, and here it is," and Elfie gave him the little pile of silver tied up in a piece of dirty rag.

It was some little time before the clergyman could fully understand the mistake he had made, and how he should make it was then a mystery to him. And by the time this was made somewhat clear to his mind, he was compelled to leave to attend the meeting, for it was very late now, and what he had seen made him more anxious than ever that a refuge should be established for the poor destitute children of this neighbour hood.

The minister had placed the money given back to him by Elfie in the hand of the teacher, to be expended for the benefit of the two girls; and after she had seen them both eat a basin of bread and milk, she questioned them upon their mode of living, and asked why they had never mentioned to her Susie's wish to get a place.

Both girls looked confused, and Susie said, “I was afraid, teacher."

"Afraid!" repeated the teacher.

"Yes, teacher, everybody said Susie was a thief," said Elfie with a little heightened colour. "She didn't deserve to be called a thief," she went on, "but I did ; I often used to steal things, but I don't now, for I couldn't bear to think Susie should bear my punishment all for nothing."

"And so this is why you gave the money back tonight?" said the teacher.

Elfie nodded. "I couldn't help it," she said, “when I saw Susie; all she had said about our Father's love, and what the Lord Jesus had suffered to save me from my sins, came back to my mind, and I was obliged to throw the money down."

Susie had only dimly understood what she said before, but it was explained to her now, and likewise that she was not to attempt to go out the next day until her teacher had been to see her again. She was obliged to leave them now, and giving Susie some money to buy food for the next morning, she took her departure.

After she had gone, the two girls sat talking of all that had happened, but it was evident Elfie was greatly bowed down at the thought of her attempt to rob the minister.

"I shall never learn to be honest," she said; "for if I see anything I can take, I want it directly, and I seem to forget everything else."

"But Jesus has helped you to begin, Elfie, and he'll help you to keep on till you quite hate the sin," said Susie. "I don't really like it now," said Elfie.

"Well, that is something, for you did love it once; you said so," replied Susie quickly. "Jesus has made you dislike it, and he will go on helping you."

"But I am so wicked, I shan't mind about his help if I have to stay here for ever; and it's always so hard to keep honest."

This was just what the minister was saying to some gentlemen as they walked home together. Temptations were so strong, the battle of life so hard, for these poor little street children, that it was no wonder they grew up to be wicked men and women.

When he saw the teacher again, he heard of Susie's wish to learn to be a servant, and all she had told her concerning her mother, and he resolved to befriend her if he could.

It would not be easy to persuade any one to take a girl, without a character, from such a place as Fisher's Lane, he knew; but he thought his wife would do so, and could find her some employment in helping the other servants, and a day or two afterwards Susie heard that she was to go to the minister's house about this. But, to the teacher's surprise, Susie burst into tears, and said, "Please, ma'am, could Elfie go instead of me?" "Instead of you?" repeated her teacher, "why I thought you wanted to be a servant."

"Yes, teacher, but so does Elfie-and-and I'm afraid Elfie would give up trying, if I was to go away."

"But I don't think Elfie would be able to do the work required," said the teacher.

Susie looked disappointed. "I'm very sorry," she said, "but I can't leave Elfie."

The teacher had thought, too, it would never do to leave the poor little friendless creature to herself, and believing there was already a great change effected in her character, she had determined to take charge of her herself. Elfie could run errands, and go to school with her all day, and by-and-by she would learn to do things about the house and make herself useful; and she told Susie of this plan now.

“Oh thank you, then, I shall be so glad to have this place," said Susie joyfully, and she went at once to prepare herself for the walk. It was settled that she should go as kitchen-maid, as soon as some decent clothes could be made for her, and at the same time Elfie would take up her abode with the teacher. They would still see each other, for Susie was to attend the Ragged School of an evening, and Elfie promised to go to church every Sunday, that she might sit by her, and hear from the lips of their kind friend truths which they-young as they were-had experienced; and this above all others, "Our Father's" love.

JOHN HOWARD.

BY THE REV. W. H. WITHROW, M.A., CANADA.

T is just one hundred years ago since John | Howard was initiated into his life-work of Prison Reform by his appointment to the office of Sheriff of Bedford. It may not be an inappropriate centennial commemoration of that important event to trace briefly the principal incidents of his life, and to note the results of his philanthropic labours.

She, too, had been an invalid for years, was in humble circumstances, homely in appearance, and fifty-two years of age. While in her house, Howard became dangerously ill. She tended him like a mother, and nursed the sick stranger back to life. On his recovery he astonished his simple landlady by the offer of his hand, his heart, his fortune. She refused his rather portentous offer, alleging as reasons her age-more than twice his

urgent: he felt it his duty to marry her, he said; and, having overcome her scruples, marry her he did.

John Howard's father was a successful London mer-own--and their disparity in social position. He was chant, in religion a Nonconformist, of respectable Puritan stock. Having amassed a considerable fortune in trade, he retired to the little village of Cardington in Bedfordshire, where the subject of this paper-early orphaned by the death of his mother-spent the years of his childhood. The date of his birth is not definitely known. It was probably in the year 1726. He was a gentle, shy, and sickly child, giving no augury of that strength of character and force of will which he afterwards evinced.

Young Howard had good masters, but exhibited no genius for learning. He was early placed in a London counting-house, where, among ledgers and day-books, invoices and bills of lading, he formed that practical acquaintance with business, and acquired those habits of industry, which characterized his after-life. At the age of seventeen he became, by his father's death, the heir of nearly the whole of his large fortune. But Howard's health was poor, and a change of air and occupation became imperative. He therefore forsook the leaden skies of London for the balmy atmosphere of France and Italy. While on the Continent, his Puritan training and his high moral principles preserved him from the fashionable vice and folly of the gay European capitals in which he sojourned.

On his return to England, after an absence of two years, he was obliged by his precarious health to live the quiet life of an invalid at Stoke, Newington. Here an event took place which gives an insight into his character. He lodged with a widow, a Mrs. Loidore.

The wedded life of this singularly matched coupleone of calm and quiet joy-lasted only three years, when Howard's grave and gentle spouse, always infirm in health, died. His domestic ties dissolved, his empty heart yearned for employment to fill its vacuity. Action was a habit and necessity of his soul. The fearful earthquake of 1755 had just occurred. The city of Lisbon was shaken to its foundations, and 60,000 of its inhabitants were buried in its ruins. Howard hastened to relieve the distress of the sufferers; but his generous purpose was frustrated. The Seven Years' War was raging. French privateers swept the seas. Howard was captured, and suffered the barbarities inflicted upon prisoners of war in the French dungeons of Brest; and those sufferings he never forgot. The iron of affliction entered his own soul, and made it ever thereafter more sensitive to the sorrows of others. He was released on parole, obtained an exchange, and rested not till he had procured the freedom of all his fellow-prisoners.

In three years Howard married again; and this time the choice of his heart was-in age, rank, person, and character-every way worthy of the good man whose life she was to bless. Mild, amiable, pious, and philanthropic, she ably seconded his benevolent designs. With a spirit answering to his own, during the first weeks of their honeymoon she sold the most of her jewels to establish a fund for the relief of the sick and the destitute. Richer jewels in her husband's eyes, and a

England, to grapple with its dire evils, to drag to light its dark facts, and to take away from his country the reproach of her infamous treatment of her prisoners,this was to be henceforth the work of his life.

fairer adornment of her character, were her alms-deeds | worthy of his zeal. To reform the prison system of and charities, than any wealth of pearls or diamonds that could bedeck her person, and in the sight of God an ornament of greater price. After seven years of wedded happiness she was snatched away untimely in giving birth to their only child.

The blow fell with appalling force on the bereaved husband. Howard's dream of joy was over. His heart's love, withered at its core, never budded again. His thoughts dwelt often with the past. The anniversary of his Harriet's death was a day of fasting and prayer, and the whispered utterance of her name quickened the pulsings of his heart till it grew still for ever. On her tombstone, in grateful recollection of her virtues, her husband inscribed the touching tribute of praise :

"She opened her mouth with wisdom;

And in her tongue was the law of kindness."

Howard's health gave way beneath the intensity of his grief. He again sought the balmy air of Italy for its restoration. But the glowing skies, and lovely scenery, and glorious art of that favoured land possessed no longer the absorbing interest they once had. A noble purpose filled his soul and swayed his will as the moon the tides of ocean. A new zeal fired his heart: not the passive contemplation of pathetic dead Christs on canvas, but succouring his living image in the person of suffering humanity was henceforth the purpose of his life. So, on partial restoration to health at Turin, be abandoned his design of wintering in Naples, "As I feared," he writes in his journal, "the misimprovement of a talent spent in mere curiosity, and as many donations must be suspended for my pleasure......Oh! why should vanity and folly, pictures and baubles, or even the stupendous mountains, beautiful hills, or rich valleys, which ere long will be consumed, engross the thoughts of a candidate for an everlasting kingdom! Look up, my soul! How low, how mean, how little is everything but what has a view to that glorious world of light and love!"

The immediate occasion of his entering on his great life-task was, as we have seen, his acceptance of the office of Sheriff of Bedford in the year 1773. He entered upon his duties with energy. To him the shrievalty was no mere matter of gold lace and red plush, of petty pomp and ostentation, but of earnest work. He forthwith began his inspection of Bedford Jail. That old historic prison becomes thus invested with a twofold interest. At its gate, padlocked by the leg, John Bunyan often sold the tags and laces, by making which he won his bread. Yet to his rapt soul its gloomy vanlts were glorified by the beatific vision of the New Jerusalem, and there airs from the "Land Beulah" breathed.

The appalling horrors of those hideous cells, which had been thus hallowed with the light of genius, smote the heart of Howard with consternation. It was a revelation of duty to his soul. Here was a mission

The Bedford jailer had no fees from the county, but lived by oppressing the prisoners. Howard demanded for him a stated salary. The Bench of Justices, after their wont, asked for precedents. Howard rode into the neighbouring counties in search of them. What he sought he found not, but he found that which filled his soul with grief and indignation-a world of sin, of suffering, and of wrong before unknown. He forthwith burrowed in all the dungeons in England-literally bur rowed, for many of them were underground, sometimes mere caverns in the solid rock, in which human beings were immured for years. No place, however obscure or remote, escaped his inspection; his official position, his munificent charity, and his resolute will everywhere procuring him admission.

Sadder than the wildest horrors of fiction were the awful realities of England's dungeons-the worst in Europe save those of the Inquisition. The condition of the prison-world-a world distinct by itself, with its own peculiar laws and usages, and with a densely crowded population-was simply execrable. It was, in the words of one who has made the subject a special study, "a festering mass of moral and physical corrup tion." The prisons were very pandemonia-chambers of horrors-whose misery and wickedness recall the dreadful pictures of the regions of eternal gloom in the pages of the Italian poet. They were a world without the pale of the constitution, and their inmates beyond the protection or control of the law. Religion and its rites were banished from a region cut off from civilization, apparently a precinct of hell, and already made over to the government of fiends. The cruelty, and lust, and cursed greed for gold of a brutal jailer, who frequently united the humane profession of hangman to his normal duty of warden, were indulged without restraint. Men had to crouch at a narrow wicket in the door and gasp for breath. The stench was intolerable. There was frequently no straw,* and prisoners had to lay their rheumatic limbs on the damp and cold stone floor. Yet to those who had money the utmost license was allowed. The keepers pandered to the worst vices of those who could bribe their aid.

The inhumanity practised seems incredible. "In the episcopal City of Ely," writes Howard, "the prison was rickety and ruinous, but instead of strengthening the

In one large prison the allowance for bedding was a guinea a year! The victualling was farmed out to mercenary wretches, who lived by starving the victims they were paid to feed. Provision for clothing there was none, and many poor wretches were naked in consequence. Light and air were apparently contrsband. Seldom were public fees paid to the wardens: on the contrary, the occupants of that office frequently paid large sums for the privilege of pillage and plunder which it afforded. The wardenship of the Fleet Prison was sold for £5,000.

walls and doors, the cheaper plan was adopted of chaining the prisoners on their backs to the floor, passing over them several bars of iron, and fastening an iron collar studded with spikes round their necks to prevent their escape."

Howard found comparatively few felons in the prisons. The frequent jail deliveries, when the unfortunate wretches were dragged on hurdles to the place of execution, and, amid every indignity, put to death, effectually emptied the cells of the more flagrant criminals. It was found cheaper to hang them than to keep them in prison; and this inhuman policy was publicly advocated by eminent jurists. The poor debtors, who could not be hanged for their misfortunes, were allowed to rot in dungeons. Howard, when he met such, generally paid their debts and set them free. Occasionally, to his great grief, his charity was too late. At Cardiff, a debtor to the exchequer to the amount of £7, languished in prison for ten years, and died just before the liberator came.

The fame of Howard's inquiries spread rapidly. He was summoned before a Parliamentary Committee to give evidence on the state of prisons. His revelations overwhelmed the legislature and the country with surprise. He was called to the bar of the House to receive its formal thanks. As a result of his importunity, an Act was passed for the inspection and reform of prisons. Knowing the inertness of the official mind, Howard resolved to see personally that the Act was put in force. His presence carried light and air, food and raiment, sympathy and consolation to hundreds of dungeons, and life and liberty to many who were unjustly detained.

About this time Howard became a candidate for the parliamentary representation of Bedford. He lost the election, however, by a narrow majority. He was no expert in the electioneering tactics of a hundred years ago. Nevertheless, he was exceedingly chagrined, for he thought that the political rights of nonconformity were compromised in his person; but he thus devoutly records his submission to the decrees of Providence: "I would say, 'It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth him good. He maketh light to arise out of darkness."" Howard lived to see that light, and to know that God had reserved him for something nobler than the representation of the petty borough of Bedford. His privilege it was to give a voice, whose echo should ring around the world, to the great dumb weltering mass of human wretchedness languishing and dying in a thousand dungeons.

Howard had hitherto confined his philanthropic labours to Great Britain; but this was too limited a range for his sympathies. They could not be confined within the narrow seas, but, like the waters of the ocean, encompassed the earth. A wider horizon of suffering was before him, which he was eager to explore. So he overleaped the barriers of national distinction, and claimed the world as the field of his labours. He started upon a grand tour of the old historic lands of Europe, "not,"

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to use the language of Burke-" not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces or the stateliness of temples; not to make accurate measurement of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the curiosities of modern art; not to collect medals nor collate manuscripts ;-but to dive into the depths of dungeons, to plunge into the infection of hospitals, to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain; to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt; to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries."

In 1777 Howard published his great work on the "State of Prisons”—a gallery of horrors almost as terrific as Dante's vision of the realms of gloom. In the execution of this work he was so extremely conscientious, that while reading the proof he would sometimes start off on a journey of hundreds of miles, to verify some doubtful fact, or to obtain some fresh information. This magnum opus, on which he bestowed such expenditure of toil and money, was at length literally given to the public; for besides presenting copies to the press and to every prominent individual in the kingdom, he ordered the remainder to be sold below the cost of printing and paper.

In 1781, the indefatigable philanthropist started on a new continental tour through Denmark, Norway, Russia, Poland, Sicily, Spain, and Portugal. While on the voyage from Civita Vecchia to Leghorn, an incident occurred which gave a new direction and a fresh impulse to his labours. A storm arose, and their shattered bark was successively driven upon the Tuscan and the African coasts. But everywhere the inhabitants, both Christian and Moslem, refused them permission to land-their fears of the infection of the terrible plague conquering. every instinct of humanity in their breasts. This incident made a deep impression on the mind of Howard. Here was a new source of human suffering to be explored, and the misery it caused if possible removed. He was now in the sixtieth year of his age. His health, always infirm, was sore broken. He had already travelled 42,000 miles over Europe-from Lisbon to Moscow, from Stockholm to Naples-in all manner of conveyances-in cumbrous diligence or lumbering drosky, on horseback or on foot. He had sacrificed a life of ease and dignity for the self-denying toil of an apostle or a martyr. He had expended £30,000 on his labours of love. Most men would now have ceased from their toil, and enjoyed in old age their well-earned rest. Not so he. While human suffering could be relieved, and human sorrow assuaged, his philanthropic efforts must know no surcease. He girded up again his loins, and took his pilgrim-staff in hand, and set forth to encounter the perils of disease and death in their most frightful forms.

He went forth alone in his sublime crusade against the dreaded plague, the terror and the scourge of Europe. He knew the danger, and would not suffer even

his faithful servant, the companion of all his former travels, to share it. He explored the lazarets and hospitals of Marseilles, Rome, Naples, Valetta, Zante, Smyrna, and Constantinople. He daringly penetrated pest-houses and infected caravanseries. He seemed to bear a charmed life. He braved the fever-demon in his lair, and came forth unscathed. To this result his abstemious diet doubtless contributed. Some dried biscuit and a cup of milk or of cold water was his usual fare.

As the crowning act of his enthusiastic self-sacrifice, Howard resolved to sail in an infected vessel, that he might undergo the strictest quarantine, and leave a record of his experience in case he should not survive, for the benefit of the medical profession in England. The plague was in the vessel. It was also attacked by Barbary pirates. Our hero fought as valiantly as he had encountered danger in the fever-hospital. He endured a living martyrdom of forty days while quarantined in the lazaretto of Venice, parched with fever, racked with pain. But these sufferings were nothing to the pang caused by letters from England, announcing the mental aberration of his son, the result of a life of vicious indulgence. The fever of his body abated, but the barbed sorrow rankled in his heart to his dying day. On his return to England he found his son a raving maniac. Such he lived for ten years longer, and such he died.

Howard found no consolation in the proposition to erect a monument in his honour. He peremptorily declined this act of public homage. His noblest monument was in the grateful hearts of fifty-five poor debtors whom he liberated with the money subscribed.

Though his stricken heart returned ever from all its wanderings to the dear home-scenes of Cardington, he was not permitted there to end his days. Bearing his crushing load of sorrow, the lone old man turned resolutely once more to his great life-work. He designed visiting Russia, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Egypt, and the Barbary States. But his work was well-nigh done. He seemed to have a presentiment of his death. To a friend he wrote: "You will probably never see me again; but, be that as it may, it is not a matter of serious concern to me whether I lay down my life in Turkey, in Egypt, in Asia Minor, or elsewhere. The way to heaven from Grand Cairo is as near as from London." Like the word of that dauntless Christian mariner, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, is this, as in the storm and darkness he was heard to cry, "Fear not, shipmen, heaven is as near by water as by land!" Or like the older word of the monk Jerome: "Et de Hierosolymis et de Britannia æqualiter patet aula cœlestis.”

"Not from Jerusalem alone

The path to heaven ascends;

As near, as sure, as straight the way That leads to the celestial day, From furthest climes extends, Frigid or torrid zone."

From St. Petersburg Howard went to Moscow, where, as if in anticipation of his near departure, he renewed his solemn covenant with God. He was greatly interested in the condition of the Russian conscripts, the mortality among whom was appalling. Their sufferings excited his deepest commiseration. To visit their cantonments, and, if possible, to better their condition, he sailed down the Dneiper to Cherson, a Tartar town near its mouth. Here he was called to visit a young lady ill of an infectious fever. He went,-riding four-and-twenty miles by night through a pitiless winter rain-storm. He caught the infection. He soon felt that his race was run. But death had no terrors to his soul. "It is an event," he said, "to which I always look with cheerfulness; and, be assured, the subject is more grateful to me than any other. Suffer no pomp," he continued,

to be used at my funeral, nor let any monument be ever made to mark where I am laid; but lay me quietly in the earth, place a sun-dial over my grave, and let me be forgotten." Vain request! His name was too indelibly engraven on the heart of the world to be ever erased! In this assured faith, and like the setting sun calmly sinking to rest, John Howard died on the 20th of January 1790.

The tidings of his death caused a thrill of sympathy and sorrow throughout all Europe; but the deepest sympathy and the bitterest sorrow were doubtless in the hearts of the innumerable prisoners whose miseries he had soothed, and whose lives he had blessed. On the base of the statue, erected to his memory in that noble mausoleum of England's glorious dead-St. Paul's Cathe dral-is recorded a grateful country's estimation of his worth:

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As we drop a tear over his foreign grave, where, after life's long toil, he sleepeth well, let us gather up the lessons of that life and write them on our hearts for ever. May they lead all who read his story to acts of beneficence and self-sacrifice for others, and to an imitatation, in spirit at least, of that life by which he glori fied humanity!

Howard's highest praise is that he was a sincere and humble Christian. No less potent principle than the constraining love of Christ could have led him to forsake ease and fortune, to toil on alone and in obscurity, to encounter prejudice, misconception, and opposition, and to espouse danger and death. No self-seeker was he.

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