Page:Navvies and Their Needs.djvu/26

 whom we have come to see. It is not a navvy, but the daughter of a navvy, and the wife of a navvy, a girl of about twenty, with a face to which long sickness has brought more beauty than it would have had in strong health—a tender fragile being, seeming altogether out of place amid these rough surroundings. She has been ill a long time, and is not far from the end, and her sufferings are very great, terribly aggravated by the foul air, coarse food, and rough though kind nursing. It is a very sad sight, rendered more sad by what we learn of the sufferer's past life. Born in a navvy's hut, wandering all her life from place to place with her parents, surrounded always by sights and sounds of evil, what could she know of good ? In no place where her father has worked before has any provision been made for the mental or spiritual welfare of the navvies or their children—no school, no church. Her mother could teach her nothing but the same poor miserable creed she held herself, of which the chief tenet was, that this world was so bad, so hard and rough, so toilsome, that no change could well be for the worse. But the girl's eyes lighten as [we enter, and she smiles a welcome. It was long before my visits were so received. At first she barely tolerated them. They seemed to her to imply that her illness was more serious than she would allow it to be, and they threatened to disturb the quiet of her ignorance. That false peace was disturbed at last, and now, knowing that her sickness is unto death, she can look forward to the end with peace which no fear can disturb, for it is founded on the simple yet profound knowledge of Him who is mighty to save. One such case as this is ample reward for any amount of care