anyone would say a priori that there should be no difficulty. One would
think that a young seal would want no teaching how to swim, nor yet a bird to
fly, but in practise a young seal drowns if put out of its depth before its
parents have taught it to swim; and so again even the young hawk must be taught
to fly before it can do so. I grant that the tendency of the times is to
exaggerate the good which teaching can do, but in trying to teach too much in
most matters we have neglected others in respect of which a little sensible
teaching would do no harm.
    I know it is the fashion to say that young people must find out these things
for themselves; and so they probably would if they had fair play to the extent
of not having obstacles put in their way. But they seldom have fair play; as a
general rule they meet with foul play and foul play from those who live by
selling them stones made into a great variety of shapes and sizes so as to form
a colourable imitation of bread. Some are lucky enough to meet with few
obstacles, some are plucky enough to override them, but in the greater number of
cases, if people are saved at all, they are saved so as by fire.
    But to continue my story. While Ernest was with me, Ellen was looking out
for a shop, on the south side of the Thames in the neighbourhood of the Elephant
and Castle, which was then almost a new, and very rising one. By one o'clock she
had found several from which a selection was to be made, and before night the
pair had made their choice.
    Ernest brought Ellen to me; I did not want to see her, but could not well
refuse. He had laid out a few of his shillings upon her wardrobe, so that she
was neatly dressed, and indeed she looked so pretty and so good that I could
hardly be surprised at Ernest's infatuation when the other circumstances of the
case were taken into consideration. Of course we hated one another instinctively
from the first moment we set eyes on one another, but we each told Ernest that
we had been most favourably impressed.
    Then I was taken to see the shop. An empty house is like a stray dog, or a
body from which the life has departed. Decay sets in at once in every part of
it, and what mould and wind and weather would spare street boys commonly
destroy. Ernest's shop in its untenanted state was a dirty unsavoury place
enough. The house was not old but