If I needed an excuse for so long an allusion to that pathetic story, which has stirred so many hearts throughout England, I might find it in the passage I have just quoted; but I seek none. I refer to the "Christmas Carol," because in it the figure of the crippled boy, occupying so small a space, yet is such a living, touching influence as to be one of the household fancies that associate themselves with our thoughts of Christmas-tide in poor homes; because there are so many little crutches the sounds of which are heard—though fewer than there used to be before orthopædic surgery became a special branch of study, and hospitals were founded for its practice; because, though Tiny Tim may represent so many crippled children who are the helpless members of poor families, where they are tended with as kindly care as working fathers and mothers can find time for—there are hundreds of other deformed or maimed lads whose lot is made the harder because of the want of sympathy and ready aid that would lift them out of utter helplessness, or give them such light labour to perform as would {180} diminish their sense of dependence. Finally, because I desire you to bear me company to one place in London where this last need is recognised, and where forty crippled boys, suffering from various incurable deformities, which yet have left them the use of their hands, are not only taught a trade, but are encouraged, fed, and nurtured for the three years during which they are inmates of the home—"The National Industrial Home for Crippled Boys." Alighting from the railway carriage which conveys us from Mansion House Station to the pleasant old High Street of Kensington, we are close to the place that we have come to see, for the building itself—a quaint old house, with a central doorway between two projecting deep bay-windowed fronts, and built of the reddest of red brick—stands at the end of Wright's Lane, looking us full in the face as we approach it to read the style and title plainly painted across its upper storey. The house has good reason for looking the world thus bluffly in the face, for it is an independent building, bought and paid for: hearth-stone, roof tree, and chimney, freehold, and without debt or mortgage. Till this was done, all thought of considerable extension was put aside. The question was how to provide, out of voluntary subscriptions and contributions, for the fifty inmates who could be admitted within those sheltering walls. It must be premised, however, that ten pounds a year has to be paid for each boy who is accepted, during the three years that he remains there, to be taught in the evening school and in the workshop, not only how to read and write and cipher, but to become a good workman at tailoring, carpentering, or die-engraving and colour-stamping.