REV. DAVID LAING. 265 



to improve and assist his parishioners ' in mind, body, 1858. 

 and estate,' devised a plan for opening playgrounds ground^" 

 wherever land could be obtained in London, in which poor movement 

 children might play harmlessly and happily, uncontami- 

 nated by street influences. Mr. Laing asked me to join 

 his committee, and my husband fully shared the interest 

 felt in the scheme. We had a dinner at the Freemasons' 

 Tavern, at which Mr. Charles Dickens presided, and 

 spoke as warmly as he was known to feel for the little 

 vagrants, who, like the dweller in Tom All-alone' s, were 

 always being ( chivied ' away. A meeting, too, was held 

 for the same object, when Lord Shaftesbury was in the 

 chair, supported by Lord Ebury and Mr. De Morgan, who 

 both spoke warmly in our favour. 1 Our object was not 

 attained, partly from the difficulty of exciting general 

 interest, partly from the want of workers on the committee, 

 for Mr. Laing's health gave way, and the society ceased 

 to exist. The want is now in some measure but not 

 entirely supplied by the playgrounds of the Board schools. 

 It was a few years before this time that Mr. Dickens 

 and Mr. De Morgan had met at the house of Mr. Charles 

 Knight at Broadstairs. I heard that the meeting gave 

 pleasure to both, but I was not myself of the party. It 

 was in the autumn, on one day of which the forty drowned 

 bodies of cattle were heaped on the little pier, as described 

 in the volume of letters recently published. 2 I well re- 



1 I wrote in Household Words l A Plea for Playgrounds/ and a 

 longer article in Good Words some time after for Miss Octavia Hill's 

 playground. 



2 Some little time ago I came upon a letter from Mr. Dickens to us 

 both, dated 1840. A difference of opinion had arisen between my hus- 

 band and myself on the meaning of one of the illustrations in Nicholas 

 Nickleby, that in which Mrs. Kenwigs, her four daughters, with Miss 

 Petowker the fireman's daughter, and the reciter of the Blood- 

 drinker's Burial, appear. Mr. De Morgan believed that the stout 

 lady was the fireman's daughter, and the thin lady the mother of the 

 little girls who were ' too beautiful to live.' The dispute ran so high 

 that it could only be settled by an appeal to head-quarters. Accord- 

 ingly Mr. De Morgan sent a letter to the author from * a lady and 



