AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
11 
you off in a minute. Any body’s child can tell, 
at a glance of those sharp eyes, whether you 
have any thing or nothing in your pocket; 
whether your heart is hard or soft; whether 
you are a parish officer or a detective policeman. 
You may deceive casual observers, but Any 
body’s child is not be done. Admitted. 
He has no respect for you; if you freely offer 
him money, you are a flat; he has a ready im¬ 
pertinence to throw at you should you be harsh 
to him ; he hates you if you be either a parish 
officer or a detective. If you be a philan¬ 
thropist he listens to you only to laugh at you. 
Any body’s child is twelve years old, yet he 
has had great experience in the world. He is 
skilled in eveiy artifice, and ready to profit by 
any. Admitted. 
1s it his cue to be penitent, to repent thor¬ 
oughly, to cry, and call himself an abandoned 
wretch and a miserable sinner, to declare that 
there is no good in him, that death is the best 
possible thing that could happen to him, to ex¬ 
hibit a knowledge of religious observances— 
he will do all this, you know he will. Ad¬ 
mitted. 
First, he cries; then he allows himself to be 
soothed ; then he describes the terrible hard¬ 
ships he has suffered; then he strikes up a 
psalm, which he sings very fairly. This per¬ 
formance is well adapted to touch the feelings 
and to influence the pockets of the good ladies 
who go their rounds courageously, about the 
worst by-ways of the city, doing what they 
conceive to be their duty, quietly and firmly ; 
distributing, with real charity of heart—but 
often to unworthy objects—money which they 
can ill spare. Any body’s child knows these 
good ladies very well. He hears what they 
have to say with downcast eyes ; and he is very 
serious when he takes the tracts they are so 
good as to distribute. But how can he read 
while he is hungry? The lady is certainly to 
be touched by this appeal, and all honor to her 
gentle heart! Any body’s child receives six¬ 
pence. Then the lady proceeds to the next 
court, and Any body’s child buys some pudding 
at a house close at hand—which he wraps up in 
the tract—and saves twopence for the low the¬ 
atre at night. You know all that is true of Any 
body’s child. Admitted. 
Any body’s child plays other parts. Many 
come to inquire into his condition ; to ask him 
about his parentage, his mode of life, the num¬ 
ber of times he has been in prison, the games 
he has played. To these he appears very hard¬ 
ened indeed. He has no recollection of his 
mother, and his father is somewhere in the 
country. He is allowed to sleep upon a pallet 
in the corner of a kind old woman’s kitchen up 
a court. He lives by all sorts of stratagems. 
He holds gentlemen’s horses; he goes out with 
costermongers to cry their wares. He has 
been offered the situation of errand-boy, to carry 
out goods ; but he never liked it; such places 
was always too hard for him. He has been in 
prison many times, five or six times at least. 
He proceeds to repeat the prison regulations, 
for he knows them by heart. He has been en¬ 
gaged with other boys in taking lead from 
house-roofs; in “ snow gathering,” (a poetic ex¬ 
pression for clothes stealing from hedges,) in 
picking pockets at fairs. He can turn his hand 
to any thing destructive ; but finds the world 
is again him. He knows very well that he is an 
outcast, and that boys of his sort are not to be 
admitted into any decent companionship. Yet 
his is a hard life—his is. He has tried very 
often to do something for himself—he has ; but 
it ain’t of no use, he can’t keep to nothing; he 
gets tired of it, and people gets tired of him. 
He supposes he will be transported at last. He 
doesn’t much care what becomes of him. As 
for a home—he has never had a home. He is 
glad his father has gone away, for he was always 
a thrashing of him. He will say all this to you, 
will Any body’s child. Admitted. 
Any body’s child here begins a true story, a 
little colored. He watches narrowly the expres¬ 
sion of his questioner, and shapes his answer 
according to the result of his observation. He 
thinks there is a chance of getting something 
out of his listener, perhaps half-a-crown, per¬ 
haps a passage to the diggings; but he is afraid 
it may be an introduction to some reformatory 
institution. 
Any body’s child plays a third part. Admit¬ 
ted. This is played when he is accosted by 
an inquirer who is the sworn advocate of popu¬ 
lar education. Herein the child is a mass of 
ignorance. He has never heard who is king 
or queen. He is not certain that it ain’t the 
Black Prince. How should he know ? He has 
heard of the Creator once or twice, but knows 
nothing about the New Testament. Cannot 
read or write ; wishes he could. Will go to the 
ragged school; wouldn’t he like to ? But he 
must have something to eat, afore he can 
think of learning any thing. Has heard of all 
sorts of places built to do good to him ; but he 
doesn’t like them. He isn’t fond of work. It’s 
a hard life in the streets; but he will get used 
to it in time. 
All this admitted. Admit on the other hand— 
you must, if you admit the sun and the eternal 
heavens to be realities—that while opponents 
discuss theories, he grows up to Newgate and 
perdition. 
Yet, truly regarded, Any body’s child is some¬ 
thing more than this worthless little wretch and 
irredeemable outcast. Because he cannot be 
made to mend his ways in a few weeks; because 
it is not easy to make him the quiet inhabitant 
of a monotonous House of Refuge ; because he 
cannot recognize a ministering angel in a police 
officer; because he is slow to learn, and has a 
disgust for the irksome foundations of educa¬ 
tion ; because the wild animal of a city alley 
cannot, in a few days, become a lap-dog for lady 
visitors to pat and smooth ; voices begin to cry 
aloud that the case is hopeless. Let our voice 
cry aloud, instead, To whom does Any body’s 
child belong ? To some of us, surely, if not to 
all of us. What are our laws, if they secure 
for this child no protection; what are we, if, 
under our eyes, Any body's child grows up to 
he Every body's enemy. 
Any body’s child is undoubtedly Some body’s 
child. To discover this Some body, who basely 
deserts it, should be the duty of the State ; and 
the law’s heaviest hand would we lay upon this 
Some body. The State, professing and calling 
itself Christian, and therefore refusing to breed 
plagues and wild beasts and rubbish to bo 
shot into the bottomless pit, should systemati¬ 
cally take that child, and make it a good citizen. 
And as it can, in most cases find out Some 
body when he or she has done a murder on the 
body, so let it find out Some body guilty of the 
worse murder of this child’s soul, and punish 
that heaviest of all offenders, in pocket and 
person. 
Any body’s child is a little fiend, a social 
curse, a hypocrite, a liar, a thief. Admitted. 
But if the State had long ago made Some body 
accountable for the child, and taken upon itself 
the duties of parent, Any body’s child, in lieu 
of the dreadful creature you recoil from, would' 
now be a hopeful little fellow, with the roses of 
youth upon tiis cheeks, and the truth of happy 
childhood on his lips. 
Any body’s child cannot too soon become the 
adopted of us all; and the Some body who 
gave it birth cannot too soon or too relentlessly 
be made to pay the charges of the adoption, or 
be punished in default. Recent conferences on 
this shame to England have renewed our hopes 
of Any body’s child. Reader, as you have 
children of your own, or were a child yourself, 
remember him ! 
-• • »- 
From the Knickerbocker Magazine. 
LITTLE PEOPLE’S SIDE-TABLE. 
A wee fellow was learning to read in a pic¬ 
ture-primer. He commenced one morning 
“H-e-n.” Well, what does that spell? It puz¬ 
zled him ; but after ogling at the picture a mo¬ 
ment, his face suddenly brightened, and, look¬ 
ing up triumphantly, lie ejaculated : 
“ Rooster!” 
Another, at another time, happened to be 
reading of the curious skin of an elephant. 
“Did you ever see an elephant’s skin?” I 
asked. 
“7 have!” shouted a little “six-year old” at 
the foot of the class. 
“Where?” 1 asked, quite amused at his earn¬ 
estness. 
“ On the elephant!" said he, with a most pro¬ 
voking grin. 
He had seen “ the elephant,” that boy, young 
as he was. 
A little boy came in one morning, with his 
eyes wide open, and inquired if the Chinese 
stood on their heads. 
“No,”I answered, somewhat surprised at the 
question; “why?” 
“’Cause,” said he, “Jim Brown says they 
live under us, on the other side of the world, 
and I don’t see how they stick, any how.” 
A little girl here, after repeating her usual 
prayer which her sick mother had taught her, 
asked if she might say “words of her own.” 
Leave been given, she went on : 
“0 Lord! don’t let my ma die, nor my pa, 
nor gran’-pa, nor gran’-ma, nor any of my uncles 
and aunts, or any of my cousins ; and don’t let 
our hired girl die; but, 0 Lord, you may let 
who else die you are a mind to!” 
Two on Three Thousand Pigs. —During a re¬ 
cent visit to the interior, we heard of an inci¬ 
dent not yet cold on the breath of local circula¬ 
tion, which had as well receive newspaper life 
and immortality now as at any other time. A 
city-country gentleman of the section, which we 
were visiting, who listphs after the most ap¬ 
proved fashion, wanted a few pigs, for the pur¬ 
pose of supplying his family with roasters in the 
fall and bacon in the winter. He had a new 
man-of-all-work, who was not very familiar with 
his peculiarity of speech, and had not exactly 
taken the trouble to acquaint himself with the 
line of business in which his employer was en¬ 
gaged. 
“John,” said the city-country gentleman, one 
day after breakfast, “ go out this morning and 
buy me two or three thows and pigs.” 
“Yes, sir,” replied John, “it shall be done.” 
John did not return till late in the day, when 
he was met by his master and accosted thus : 
“ Did you get ’em ?” 
“No sir,” answered John, “not all. The 
drovers have been about buying up large num¬ 
bers, and I could get only eight hundred.” 
“Eight hundred what, thir?” demanded the 
master impatiently. 
“Eight hundred pigs, as you told me,” replied 
John. 
“ I told you no such thing. T told you, thir, 
to go and buy me two or three thows and pigs.” 
“I know it,” answered Jonn, “ but 1 couldn’t 
get two or three thousand. I’ve been out all 
day, and scoured the whole country, and could 
get but eight hundred. 
Light now, for the first time after the order 
had been given, flashed on the gentleman’s mind. 
He comprehended the cause of the misunder¬ 
standing, and although not exactly in the mood 
for laughing, very good naturedly pocketed the 
costly joke, and asked: 
“ How many did you get, John ?” 
“Eight hundred, sir, and that was all 1 could 
get.” 
“And did you buy them outright, John, or 
only talk of taking them ?” 
“ Bought them for good,” replied John, “and 
had hard work to keep them out of the hands 
of the drovers, and the owners will be here for 
their pay in the morning.” 
The best of the joke, so far as the gentleman 
was concerned, is to follow. This happened last 
season. The hogs were received, kept and fed 
for a short time, and then sold for the block at 
a handsome profit.— Louisville Courier. 
