From "Rural Life of England," by WM. H. HOWITT, we take the following extract:
"The wildness into which some of these children in the more solitary parts of the country, grow, (recollect this is in Lancashire, near the great city of Manchester,) is, I imagine, not to be surpassed in any of the back settlements of America. On the 5th July, 1836, the day of that remarkable thunder-storm which visited a great part of the kingdom with much fury, being driven into a cottage at the foot of Pendle by the coming on of this storm, and while standing at the door watching its progress, I observed the head of some human creature, carefully protruded from the doorway of an adjacent shed, and as suddenly withdrawn on being observed. To ascertain what sort of a person it belonged to, I went into the shed, but at first found it too dark to enable me to discover anything. Presently, however, as objects became visible, I saw a little creature, apparently a girl about ten years old, reared very erectly against the opposite wall. On accosting her in a kind tone, and telling her to come forward and not be afraid, she advanced from the wall, and behold! there stood another little creature, about the head shorter, whom she had been concealing. I asked the elder child, whether this younger one were a girl. She answered, 'Ne'a.' 'Was it a boy?' 'Ne'a.' 'What! neither boy nor girl? Was she a girl herself?' 'Ne'a.' 'What! was it a boy I was speaking to?' 'Ne'a.' 'What in the name of wonder were they then?' 'We are childer.' 'Childer! and was the woman in the house their mother?' 'Ne'a.' 'Who was she, then?' 'Ar mam.' 'O! your mam! and do you keep cows in this shed?' 'Ne'a,--bee-as.' In short, common English was quite unintelligible to these poor little creatures, and their appearance was as wild as their speech. They were two fine young creatures, nevertheless,--especially the elder, whose form and face were full of that symmetry and fine grace that are sometimes the growth of unrestrained Nature, and would have delighted the sculptor or painter. Their only clothing was a sort of little boddice with skirts, made of a reddish stuff, and rendered more picturesque by sundry patches of scarlet cloth, no doubt from their mother's old cloak. Their heads, bosoms, and legs to the knees, were bare to all the influences of earth and heaven; and on giving each of them a penny, they bounded off with the fleetness and elasticity of young roes. No doubt the hills and the heaths, the wild flowers of summer, and the swift waters of the glens, were the only live long day companions of these children, who came home only to their oatmeal dinner, and a bed as simple as their garments. Imagine the violent change of life by _the sudden capture and confinement of these little English savages in the night-and-day noise, labor, and foul atmosphere of the cotton purgatories_!