" Have you ever examined the faces of the neglected children of the poor? Other children have gladness in their faces. When a group of them rush across the road it seems as though a spring gust had unloosened an orchard of apple-blossoms. But the children of the poor! There is but little ring and laughter and it stops quickly, as though some bitter memory tripped it. They have an old walk. They do not skip or run up on the lumber just for the pleasure of leaping down.

They never bathed in the mountain stream. They never waded in the brook for pebbles. They never chased the butterfly across the lawn, putting their hat right down where it was just before.

Childhood has been dashed out of them. Want waved its wizard wand above the manger of their birth, and withered leaves are lying where God intended a budding giant of battle."

T. DeWitt Talmage - photo by Paul Wager