“’Teacher, he didn’t mind you; he spoke, and I licked him; and I’ll do it again if be don’t mind you.’

“His services were of course no longer required, although he had done his duty according to his understanding of the case.

“Thus it was at the beginning of this work nearly twenty years ago,” said the missionary.  “Now we have an orderly school of over two hundred children, who, but for the opportunity here given, would grow up without even the rudiments of all education.  Is not this a gain upon the enemy?  Think of a school like this doing its work daily among these neglected little ones for nearly a score of years, and you will no longer feel as if nothing had been done—­as if no headway had been gained.  Think, too, of the Sabbath-school work in that time, and of the thousands of children who have had their memories filled with precious texts from the Bible, who have been told of the loving Saviour who came into the world and suffered and died for them, and of his tender love and perpetual care over his children, no matter how poor and vile and afar off from him they may be.  It is impossible that the good seed of the word scattered here for so long a time should not have taken root in many hearts.  We know that they have, and can point to scores of blessed instances—­can take you to men and women, now good and virtuous people, who, but for our day-and Sabbath-schools, would, in all human probability, be now among the outcast, the vicious and the criminal.

“So much for what has been done among the children.  Our work with men and women has not been so fruitful as might well be supposed, and yet great good has been accomplished even among the hardened, the desperate and the miserably vile and besotted.  Bad as things are to-day—­awful to see and to contemplate, shocking and disgraceful to a Christian community—­they were nearly as bad again at the time this mission set up the standard of God and made battle in his name.  Our work began as a simple religious movement, with street preaching.”

“And with what effect?” asked Mr. Dinneford.

“With good effect, in a limited number of cases, I trust.  In a degraded community like this there will always be some who had a different childhood from that of the crowds of young heathen who swarm its courts and alleys; some who in early life had religious training, and in whose memories were stored up holy things from Scripture; some who have tender and sweet recollection of a mother and home and family prayer and service in God’s temples.  In the hearts of such God’s Spirit in moving could touch and quicken and flush with reviving life these old memories, and through them bring conviction of sin, and an intense desire to rise out of the horrible pit into which they had fallen and the clay wherein their feet were mired.  Angels could come near to these by what of good and true was to be found half hidden, but not erased from their book of life, and so help in the work of their recovery and salvation.