Chinese Gordon Author:Archibald Forbes 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 III. GRAVESEND AND THE EQUATOR. From 1865 to 1871 Gordon lived at Graves- end, employed on the duty of improving the defences of the Thames. These ... more »were his six years of quiet peace and beneficent happiness. It is a beautiful life of which Mr. Hake gives us a sketch so tender. " He lived wholly for others," writes that gentleman. " His house was school and hospital and almshouse in turn, was more like the abode of a missionary than of a commanding officer of Engineers. The troubles of all interested him alike. The poor, the sick, the unfortunate, were ever welcome, and never did supplicant knock vainly at his door. He always took a great delight in children, but especially in boys employed on the river or the sea. Many he rescued from the gutter, cleansed them and clothed them, and kept them for weeks in his house. For theirbenefit he established reading classes, over which he himself presided, reading to and teaching the lads with as much ardour as if he were leading them to victory. He called them his ' kings/ and for many of them he got berths on board ship. One day a friend asked him why there were so many pins stuck into the map of the world all over his mantelpiece ; he was told that they marked and followed the course of the boys on their voyages ; that they were moved from point to point as his youngsters advanced, and that he prayed for them as they went, night and day. The light in which he was held by those lads was shown by inscriptions in chalk on the fences. A favourite legend was ' God bless the Kernel!' So full did his classes at length become that the house would no longer hold them, and they had to be given up. Then it was that he attended and taught at the Ragged Schools, and it was a pleasant thing to watch the attention with which his wild scholar...« less