Page 472 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

es. 15th December, absenting himself at roll call, two days’
cells. 23rd December, insolence and insubordination, two
days’ cells. 8th January, insolence and insubordination, 12
lashes. 20th January, insolence and insubordination, 12
lashes. 22nd February, insolence and insubordination, 12
lashes and one week’s solitary. 6th March, insolence and in-
subordination, 20 lashes.’
‘That was the last?’ asked Frere.
‘Yes, sir,’ says Johnson.
‘And then he—hum—did it?’
‘Just so, sir. That was the way of it.’
Just so! The magnificent system starved and tortured a
child of twelve until he killed himself. That was the way of
it.
After luncheon the party made a progress. Everything
was most admirable. There was a long schoolroom, where
such men as Meekin taught how Christ loved little chil-
dren; and behind the schoolroom were the cells and the
constables and the little yard where they gave their ‘twen-
ty lashes”. Sylvia shuddered at the array of faces. From the
stolid nineteen years old booby of the Kentish hop-fields, to
the wizened, shrewd, ten years old Bohemian of the London
streets, all degrees and grades of juvenile vice grinned, in
untamable wickedness, or snuffed in affected piety. ‘Suffer
little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of
such is the Kingdom of Heaven,’ said, or is reported to have
said, the Founder of our Established Religion. Of such it
seemed that a large number of Honourable Gentlemen, to-
gether with Her Majesty’s faithful commons in Parliament

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