"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 antece
dents, 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 gather up the Ghetto
children and send them away on a day s outing to
the country. They 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 circum
stances, 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 thev can be carted off to the fields and woods
for the one day in their lives. One day! In all their
lives, one day ! And for the rest of the days, as the
boy told a certain bishop, " At ten we ops the
wag; at thirteen we nicks things; an at sixteen
we bashes the copper." Which is to say, at ten

[[279]]

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v?