came to the door.
As a rule of business, I do not give to beggars. But the strong affection between the man and child touched my emotions. I allowed him in.
“Begging your pardon, sir. Could I do labour for you in exchange for a loaf of bread?”
My answer was slow in coming.
“Please, sir. The child is hungry, and it is wrong that she should suffer. I will do anything for bread for the child.”
There is a table in the rear of the bakery where I sometimes sit and engage in conversation. The apprentice boy was on duty in the front, which gave me the freedom to converse. Had it been otherwise, everything would have happened differently and I would not have this tale to tell.
I led the man and child past loaves of bread, rolls, pastries, and other goods of my trade. The smell of coffee and freshly baked bread filled the air.
There was a warm fireplace by the table in back. Sometimes we are hungry. Sometimes we are frightened. But cold is often hardest upon us.
The man sat by the fire and opened his hands to receive its warmth. The child took off her mittens and did the same.
He was of average height, well made with intelligent eyes and a muscular frame grown thin.
“What is your name?”
“Spriggs, sir. Christopher Spriggs.”
“And the child?”
“Ruby.”
“She is your daughter?”
“No, sir. My niece.”
“And her parents?”
“She has none.”
I extended my hand.
“My name is Antonio.”
I put two mugs on the table. One with coffee from a pot above the fire, the other with milk for the child. Then I cut two thick slices of bread, one for Christopher, the other for Ruby.
His eyes met hers with a reassuring look.
Ruby took the bread, clenched it in her little hand, and ate as though nothing else in the world mattered. Not ravenously. She chewed and swallowed each bite. But after each swallow, she immediately took another bite.
When the bread was gone, she smiled.
There was a glow about her. Had she been wrapped in a blanket, it would have been impossible for the haughtiest stranger to differentiate between her and a child of the highest rank in society. As for her smile, a blessing from the Archbishop of Canterbury would have done no more to warm my heart.
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“In no place long,” Christopher responded.
“And the child’s parents?”
“Her mother, my sister, was a good woman. She died of fever a year ago. The father was there only on the night of conception.”
“Are there only two of you?”
“Only two.”
As we conversed, Ruby’s eyes rested upon mine with an expression of wondering thoughtfulness that is seen sometimes in young children.
Christopher did not eat his bread. I know when a man is hungry. I can see it in his eyes.
“Eat. I will give you more for Ruby to take home.”
The bread that I had given to him was quickly gone.
“I would like to work for what we have eaten,” he said.
“Not today. But you have come at the right time. Perhaps it is fate. Be here tomorrow at ten o’clock in the morning. There may be a job and more for you.”
I gave Christopher the rest of the loaf of bread to take home. He and Ruby left. I knew the world they were retreating to. The streets are mean and close. Poverty and misfortune fester. Hunger and want had surrounded Ruby Spriggs from the first dawning of her reason.
That night, she would not leave my thoughts. I was anxious for her return.
I was born in London in 1801. King George III sat upon the throne. The French still owned a portion of America as vast as the original colonies. Lord Nelson’s victory over the French and Spanish fleets was in the future. A practical steamship had yet to be built.
My father was a British seaman who married a beautiful Italian woman and brought her back to England. Unfortunately, I inherited my father’s looks. When I was five years old, my mother fled England with an Italian nobleman. I never saw her again. If she had been the wife of a king, war would have followed. But since she was only my father’s wife, the affairs of state went on uninterrupted.
The schools in England are for people of means, which I was not. It was expected that I would live my life as a labourer, unable to read or write. Then, in my eighteenth year, I met a man named Octavius Joy.
Mr. Joy made a great deal of money in honest finance. He was a brilliant man of scrupulous veracity with regard to numbers. Once he had earned his fortune, he set out to spend it.
“People are anxious to be employed and fairly paid for their labour,” Mr. Joy said. “Those who work hard and are able to provide for their families through fairly paid labour are likely to be content. I have seen men whose lives were lived under the worst privation and suffering become happy and at peace when they were given work to do and were fairly compensated.”
In keeping with this belief, Mr. Joy put common men and women in situations where they learned the skills necessary to run a business. When their skills were sufficient, he placed them in a business of their own. “I seek to leave them,” he explained, “not with resources that can be easily spent but with skills that place them beyond the reach of poverty forever.”
It was also important to Mr. Joy that people learn to read and write. He expressed this view with the declaration, “Reading is a passageway to knowledge. All men and women should be able to read, write, and perform simple arithmetic. They should be able to keep accounts. That is, they should be able to put down in words and figures the cost of what they need to live and how much money they have to spend. I hope for a day when all children in England regardless of their class are taught to read and write. Reading and writing, knowledge of the world, the spread of ideas. That is the key to everything.”
In keeping with this philosophy, Mr. Joy established a learning center in London. Common men and women and their children were welcome to attend free classes in reading that were taught six days a week from eight o’clock in the morning until eight o’clock at night.
I was a labourer in Covent Garden market when Mr. Joy took me off the streets. At his direction, I apprenticed in a bakery. I learned the trade
