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I would beg
to call your attention to my group of small, exceedingly
ragged, dirty children in the foreground of my picture,
where you are about to pass. I would, if permitted,
observe that, though at first they may appear just such a
group of ragged dirty brats as anywhere get in the way
and make a noise, yet, being considered attentively, they
like insects, molluscs, miniature plants, &c.,
develop qualities to form a most interesting study, and
occupy the mind at times when all else might fail to
attract. That they are motherless, the baby's black
ribbons and their extreme dilapidation indicate, making
them all the more worthy of consideration, a mother,
however destitute, would scarcely leave the eldest one in
such a plight. As to the father, 1 have no doubt he
drinks, and will be sentenced in the police-court for
neglecting them. The eldest girl, not more than ten, poor
child! is very worn-looking and thin, her frock,
evidently the compassionate gift of some grown-up person,
she has neither the art nor the means to adapt to her own
diminutive proportions - she is fearfully untidy
therefore, and her way of wrenching her brother's hair
looks vixenish and against her. But than a germ or
rudiment of good housewifery seems to pierce through her
disordered envelope, for the younger ones are taken care
of, and nestle to her as to a mother - the sunburnt baby,
which looks wonderfully solemn and intellectual as all
babies do, as I have no doubt your own little cherub
looks at this moment asleep in its charming basinet, is
fat and well-to-do, it has even been put into poor
mourning for mother. The other little one, though it
sucks a carrot in lieu of a sugar~plum, and is shoeless,
seems healthy and happy, watching the workmen. The care
of the two little ones is an anxious charge for the elder
girl, and she has become a premature scold through having
to manage that boy - that boy, though a merry,
good-natured-looking young Bohemian, is evidently the
plague of her life, as boys always are. Even now he will
not leave that workman's barrow alone, and gets his hair
well-pulled, as is natural.
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