“They’re perfectly wild, Madam-these children are,” says Mr. Toddleworth, in reply to a question Mrs. Swiggs put respecting the immense number of ragged and profaning urchins that swarm the streets. “They never heard of the Bible, nor God, nor that sort of thing. How could they hear of it? No one ever comes in here-that is, they come in now and then, and throw a bit of a tract in here and there, and are glad to get out with a whole coat. The tracts are all Greek to the dwellers here. Besides that, you see, something must be done for the belly, before you can patch up the head. I say this with a fruitful experience. A good, kind little man, who seems earnest in the welfare of these wild little children that you see running about here-not the half of them know their parents-looks in now and then, acts as if he wasn’t afraid of us, (that is a good deal, Madam,) and the boys are beginning to take to him. But, with nothing but his kind heart and earnest resolution, he’ll find a rugged mountain to move. If he move it, he will deserve a monument of fairest marble erected to his memory, and letters of gold to emblazon his deeds thereon. He seems to understand the key to some of their affections. It’s no use mending the sails without making safe the hull.” “At this moment Mrs. Swiggs’ attention is attracted by a crowd of ragged urchins and grotesque-looking men, gathered about a heap of filth at that corner of Orange street that opens into the Points. “They are disinterring his Honor, the Mayor,” says Mr. Toddleworth. “Do this sort of thing every day, Madam; they mean no harm, you see.” Mrs. Swiggs, curious to witness the process of disinterring so distinguished a person, forgets entirely her appointment at the House of the Foreign Missions, crowds her way into the filthy throng, and watches with intense anxiety a vacant-looking idiot, who has seen some sixteen sumers, lean and half clad, and who has dug with his staff a hole deep in the mud, which he is busy piling up at the edges.