Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI. MORAL TRAINING. One day a little waif of seven, having committed every other sin he could think of, proceeded to strangle himself with a rope. He was under treatment at the time in the hospital, for a disease which was entirely the result of dirt. The nurse coming suddenly into the room, found him stark and black ! Hastily summoning aid, she cut the rope through, and began to take measures for restoring the child to consciousness. "How unhappy he must have been —poor little fellow," she said at last to the doctor who was helping her. The doctor was watching his patient: and he had just assured himself that that small personage enjoying the drama of resuscitation, was prolonging it by continuing to execute the movements of a person in extremis, long after such manifestations were necessary or natural. In this dramatic representation he was very successful, thanks to his minute observation of a dying man in the ward. " Unhappy—not he," said the doctor. And he proceeded to intimate emphatically to his young patient,Children Of The Street. that the time of danger being over, he could no longer receive the ministrations due to the dying, but must prepare, if his convulsions continued, to receive attentions of quite another order. Upon which the young actor sat up, and looked around him with steady nerves and some curiosity. Visitors came to see him. All curious, all sympathetic they stood around his bed. "Why did you do this terrible thing ?" asked a lady. The waif's eyes twinkled. "Ool I wanted to see what Hell was like," said he. Perhaps the child's words were true. Curiosity does exist in beings who seem to be too coarsely organized ever to experience fear. According to the registrations of the electric algometer with which pain is measured...