Note 68 — Chapter III

Of Edwin's kindness of heart many instances are remembered. Of these, two, characteristic of the man, shall be selected. The head gardener at Bruce Castle lived in the (then) village of Tottenham down a narrow entry at a corner of which stood one of the inevitable drink-traps which in this civilised country are permitted to be set up wherever the poor most do congregate. John simply could not pass that public-house. He was too good a man to be allowed to sink into a sot; and eventually my uncle bethought him of building a gardener's cottage in a corner of the Castle grounds. The plan succeeded: John lived to a hale old age, and some of his children did well in the world. One afternoon, when my uncle was walking along the Strand on his way home from Somerset House after an arduous day's work, he saw a shabbily-dressed child sobbing bitterly. Now, Edwin Hill could never pass a little one in distress, and therefore stopped to ask what was the matter. The child had wandered from home, and was lost. The address it gave was at some distance, and in quite an opposite direction from that in which my uncle was bound. Most men would have made over the small waif to the first policeman who came in sight. But not this man. He took the wearied mite in his arms, carried it home, and placed it in its anxious mother's arm.