The children are lying and dying in the mud, with none to deliver. As a result of our negligence and indifference to the wants of the poor gipsy child, we shall some day have a crop of thistles, hard, sharp, and strong, difficult to handle and more difficult to uproot, think about it lightly as we may. The cries of the gipsy children have filled the earth, and reached heaven for help; but we have barred the school doors against them, and locked in their faces the gates through which they should have been led to health, prosperity, civilization, Christianity, and heaven. Gipsy women’s wails and gipsy children’s cries are going upward and upward; and to-day the gipsy, show, and canal children are at our doors dressed in rags and dirt, with matted hair, and tears in their eyes, beseeching us to take them into our embraces and soul-saving institutions, to lead them heavenward and to God, and still we refuse to listen to their entreaties. Shall we refuse to do so any longer? God grant that there may be a speedy breaking of bars, bolts, and locks that have bound our gipsies, show people, and their children to their debasing customs, and that our noble Queen, Senators, and Lawgivers may open the doors of the blessed institutions with which our seagirt isle is covered to our gipsies and their children without one moment’s delay, before our candlestick is removed and glory departed.
The Englishmen of our England of to-day have it within their power to show to the world how to improve the condition of the gipsy and canal children as no other nation has ever had before, without trampling under foot liberty and civil rights. Shall we with folded hands stand by with the blood of the canal and gipsy children hanging upon our garments, with awful effect, while the lambs of Christ’s flock are groping their way to misery, ruin, and woe? Shall we put out our hand to save the children? It is for my countrymen to answer “Yes” or “No.”
I asked my friend John Harris, the Cornish poet, to kindly help on the cause of the gipsy children, and right gladly he did it; and here is his touching poem. May it sink deep into our hearts!
“THE day is done, Zutilla, And yonder shines a star; Our camp is on the moorlands, From busy homes afar. No church bells murmur near us, No echoes from the town, And o’er the lonely common The night comes slowly down.