Dr. Barnardo, the father of "nobody's children" : a sketch / [W.T. Stead].

  • William Thomas Stead
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Barnardo, the father of "nobody's children" : a sketch / [W.T. Stead]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    1 selves. But what he has done and does do and will keep on doing is to help you to do your work by giving you a chance of helping him to do his work. And that is the practical conclusion of this long article. Will you help him ? He needs your help. “ How can you help ? ” Firstly.—By praying for him. Let no one who has just read of the marvellous miracle, the answers to prayer on which the whole work stands, dare to question the efficacy of earnest, effectual, believing prayer. Explain it by Tele¬ pathy or the Telephone or what you please, the thing works somehow. Pray, therefore, pray ! Pray God to help him and pray that God nlay help you to help Him to fulfil your own prayer ! And by way of a small practical suggestion it might be as well to have a simple little card printed, to hang in your bedroom where you pray, bearing the inscription, DO NOT FORGET TO PRAY FOR nobody’s children ! Secondly.—By thinking about “ Nobody’s Children,” and talking about them, and planning out how to help them, and how to help him who is helping them. If you think earnestly and practically as to how you would help him if you could, you may hammer out an idea which, when you have fashioned it, may, in some way you know not of, pass on to the mind of sbme other person who has the means to materialize it into fact. Thought trans¬ ference is a great fact! A bedridden pauper m the workhouse, who keeps constantly thinking out schemes and plans to help, may do more good than a millionaire. For her scheme may suddenly be wafted on the waves of her thought to the minds of a dozen millionaires. Thought is the seed-corn of action. And a good helpful thought flies like thistle-down through the air, and may spring up and bear fruit in the lives of those of whom you have never heard, and whom you may never meet. Thirdly.—^By subscribing, and getting others to sub¬ scribe, for the support of the work. Only by giving, systematic giving, can “ Nobody’s Children ” be fed, and clothed, and saved from destruction. To maintain one child in Dr. Barnardo’s Institution entails an annual expenditure of £16. What fractional part of a “ Nobody’s Child ” are you willing to support ? He has cared for so many thousands. Are you to be left without even a decimal share in one of these Little Ones ? Every day in the year, Sunday and week-day. Dr. Barnardo needs some £140 for food alone ; or £384 to feed, and clothe. and lodge, and train, and educate his vast family. £384 ^ per day is £16 per hour, or 5s. ^d. per minute—a little « over one penny a second. How many minutes will you ■ take this financial burden on your shoulders ? Every A sovereign represents a little under four minutes’ support.- M Why should you not form one of the noble Company J of Minute Men, each of whom stands pledged to bear for so many minutes in the year the responsibility of providing 1 for Nobody’s Children ? fl I do not know how the idea will strike you, but as 9 there are 525,600 minutes in the year, what a simple' J organisation it would be, how marvellously potent in m releasing the brain and head of the Father of Nobody’s ’’ -M Children if there were behind him a great army pf ■ 525,600 minute men, women, and children, each of whom 9 undertook to provide for one minute in the whole year ■ for the care of Nobody’s Children. ^ Will you be a Minute man ? Will you subscribe every >9 year enough to maintain the above Institution for so fl many minutes ? Here is a practical way of redeeming .‘]l the time. Your money, your life will not be wasted ji>\9 out of the 525,600 minutes in your year you keep Dr. -fl Barnardo going for, say ten or twenty minutes, all at 9 your own expense. ’ 9 One more suggestion, for the better-to-do of my 9 readers. The old institution of foster-brother, which 9 once played so great a part in Irish history, has died out. M Why not revive it for the benefit of Nobody’s Children ? We all desire for our own children, as one of the best of^9 God’s gifts, a kindly sympathy with their less favoure4.^9 brothers and sisters. How would it be easier or more 9 natural to develop this spirit than by linking one of our ,9 children to one of Dr. Bamardo’s wards ? For instance, .9 what a splendid idea it would be if we were to make a,S practice of taking our own child: en at say eight or nine *9 years of age to see Nobody’s Children, and then linking 9 them on to a child in Dr. Bamardo’s care, who would 9 be their child, their very own, and for whose maintenance ' j| we would pay in iheir name ! Even if we did not increase ^ our subscription by one penny piece, we could divide it . up among our own little ones, and so accustom each to feel that it had its own foster-brother or sister among.^ Nobody’s Children whom it was a privilege to support. • . Nothing, it seems to me, would tend naore beautifully ^ and effectively to deepen, extend, and perpetuate the ' interest taken in Dr. Bamardb’s work, than by instituting ' - such a system of linked battalions. . ; ’ 'W. T. Stead.