"Why didn't you ask the woman for food?" the magistrate demanded, in a
hurt sort of tone. "She would surely have given you something to eat."
"If I 'ad arsked 'er, I'd got locked up for beggin'," was the boy's
reply.
The magistrate knitted his brows and accepted the rebuke. Nobody knew
the boy, nor his father or mother. He was without beginning or
antecedent, a waif, a stray, a young cub seeking his food in the jungle
of empire, preying upon the weak and being preyed upon by the strong.
The people who try to help, who gather up the Ghetto children and send
them away on a day's outing to the country, believe that not very many
children reach the age of ten without having had at least one day there.
Of this, a writer says: "The mental change caused by one day so spent
must not be undervalued. Whatever the circumstances, the children learn
the meaning of fields and woods, so that descriptions of country scenery
in the books they read, which before conveyed no impression, become now
intelligible."
One day in the fields and woods, if they are lucky enough to be picked up
by the people who try to help! And they are being born faster every day
than they can be carted off to the fields and woods for the one day in
their lives.
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