TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10075, 22 June 1910, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

LONDON STREETS TO CITY PULPIT.

A remarkable story ; was revealed the other evening in Sydney during a lecture by the Rev. W. Ready, cf New Zealand. Mr Heady sai". his lecture was simply the story u£ 'his , own life. Bis father was a monumental mason, who had bean born in Ireland, but had afterwards gone to London, and he himself was the j oungest of ten children. He described bow, at the age of seven, barefooted, bareheaded, and ragged, he had been left to pick up a living in the London streets as best he might. He managed to exist by blacking boot"', sweeping crossings, and tuaabling—the latter feat bringing him in many coppers. At las£ he was picked up by a total stranger and admitted to a home for waifs and strays, and since that time he had never looked back until to-day he occupied a city pulpit. Mr Ready gave an extremely interesting description of the ; old London streets, which Dickens knew so well and utilised to so mucb advantage in a number of his novels. A thing once well learnt was never forgotten, and he could take on blacking boots or tumbling at any time. Ou account of the hard lessons which his life had taught him he believed in absolute total prohibition, and would never cease to work for it. "As to Socialism," said he, "I [believe in an evolutionary but not in a revolutionary Socialism."