Insure his life! Ah, the time may come when the hand of the bread-winner is still, when the little money left in the house is scarcely sufficient to pay for the "respectable funeral" which is the last effort of genteel poverty, when the red-eyed widow gathers her fatherless children about her, and wonders amidst her stupor of grief what is to become of the younger ones who yet so need her care that she will not be able to go forth to seek the means of living. To what evil influences may they be exposed while she is absent striving to earn their daily food?—the temptations of the streets for the boys: the certainty that the elder girls must either starve at home to mind the little ones, or must become drudges before they have learnt more than the mere rudiments of what they should {153} be taught. It is then she feels that dread of degradation, which is amongst the sharpest pangs of the poverty which would fain hide itself from the world. It may be that the children are left a parentless little flock, huddling together in the first dread and sorrow of the presence of death, and the sense of utter bereavement, and awaiting the intervention of those who are sent by the Father of the fatherless. Then, indeed, prompt and certain help is needed—help efficient and permanent—and such aid can seldom be secured except by organised institutions. But let us see to what that Orphan Working School, established in 1758, has developed in 1874. We have but to take a short journey to the foot of Haverstock Hill, and there, in that pleasant locality named Maitland Park, part of which is the property of the Institution, we shall see the successor of the old house in Hogsden Fields, while its plain but large and lofty committee room is the modern representative of the parlour of the George Inn, Ironmonger Lane, where plans were first laid for the maintenance of forty orphan children. This wide and lofty building, with its handsome front entrance and its less imposing side gate in the wing, is the home for nearly three hundred boys, and nearly two hundred girls, when its funds are sufficient to keep each of the long rows of neat beds in the great airy wards appropriated to a little sleeper. I mention the dormitories first, because both on the girls' and on the boys' side of the building these are illustrative of the complete orderliness and excellent management of the Institution—illustrative of what should always be the first consideration, namely, to bring comfort to the child's nature, to join to necessary {154} discipline a sense of real freedom and happy youthful confidence without dread of repression and the constant looking for of punishment.