A SOCIAL NILOMETER.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2489, 23 June 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

A SOCIAL NILOMETER.

A Street Waifs' Supper.

Is it rising or falling—this dismal river which is overflowing through t.ho dingy hlums awl dirty alleys of London —the river of paupetism, who-e pools mean despair and wlio-o highest waves mean social discontent. Many are tho Nilometers which are pointed to as infallible indicators : trade statistics ; police reports ; criminal returns; the dreadful kilometer of the poor rates ; the figures as to emigration, as to church attendance, as to poor relief in all its reforms. May not a hint or two worthy of attention, be gleaned from our annual Street, Boys' Supper? Tho gnests are impartially selected from every low area in London ; and honest and strenuous effort is made to secure that the guests shall be bona Jirte destitutes, and it is needless to say that tho boys "corneas they are," so that their appearance to the seeing eye tells at least something of their daily life and circumstances. This high tide of our calendar fell in 183S on the evening of Wednesday, January sth. as thousands of tongues in all the alums of London were ready to tell any inquirer for a week before. As usual invitation was by tickets distributed throughout the byways of the metropolis for several nights previously. But the tidings of the first night's distribution were bruited about as if the fiery cross had been sent round, and on the following morning our headquarters at Stepney Causeway were almost besieged iiy a ravenous army of hundreds of waifs. Eager and inquisitive eyes followed every respectable person passing up or down Commercial Road within hail of the Homes, and many a total stranger found himself the centre of a crowd of wiid Arab 3 vociferating with all their powers, "Please give us a ticket, sir." Never was there such an irruption of waifdom in our history, and we had to invoke the strong arm of the law in the shape of policemen to keep our approaches clear for necessary business. When, on the second night, our Beadles again went forth with their bundles of tickets, they were mobbed in every quarter by hungry applicants, so that it required the greatest patience and forbearance, and not a little ingenuity, to select the proper recipients for the valued passes. It was after all only a percentage, and that a small one, of the untold thousands who clamoured so loudly that we could admit; so that we are afraid the advantage and benefit to tha chosen few meant correlative disappointment to the unohosen many.

Ovor two thousand probloms faced the philosopher. Why should rags and dirt he found at all in the wealthiest city in the world, or, for the matter of that, in the poorest ? Poverty and squalor are not mated in the nature of things. Yet it was plain that these young peop'e had had a hard up-bringing. The majority of them were wearing other people's clothes and other people's boots, a few of them looked as if they had never enjoyed the luxury of being measured for a suit. One little maiden, whose blue toes peeped through an over-worn pair of shoes, appeared to be merely wrapt up in some mondescript fashion in a tattered shawl. Another girl, on? of seven, who lived in a " Furnished Room" with her father and mother, had an old pilot jacket, rent and dirty, which did duty against the pitiless weathor for all the piles ofjfur and flannel which a West-end mother would consider essentials. Social Topsies wero these who had " grow'd," and the pity of it all wag that they were but types of hundreds and thousands— yea, tens of thousands—all through our fair English commonwealth, aimlessly drifting through a wretched girlhood. Many of the poorest were doubtless the darlings of mothers whose struggle for bread was as hard as the nineteenth century makes it; bat others looked as if they had had no caresses, no tenderness, no loving words, nothing out of which the heart can miko the wine of life.

On the boys' side there was, perhaps, on the whole, an improvement in the general appearance since the previous year. There was a great display of red woollen "comforters," which might, impart a certain geniality aud suggestion of comfort to the crowd. At all events, till some one individual was singled out for inspection, a superficial critic might fail to see in these lads the dregs of L•, don poverty. Nor, truth to say, did i h 'boys themselves appear to believe that it was a miserable world, and that things were all in a mess. Now that they wero fairly inside a comfortable building, with the outward and visible signs of an abundant tea before them and with visions of sixpences and oranges in the back ground, thoy gave themselves up to hilarity with all the abandon of school boys. They sang jolly choruses, they larked with their neighbours, they chucked their hats at each other, they performed gymnastics on the benches, till they became at times almost the despair of their friends on the platform. There were 1850 of these boy-guests of ours—little boys who, in the eyes of Political Economy, wore unprofitable excrescences on society, that might be ruthlessly lopped off without sensible inconvenience—whilo the srirls numbered 400.—Night and Day.—Edited by Dr. T. J. Burnardo).