The Anti-Slavery Alphabet
Listen, little children, all, Listen to our earnest call: You are very young, 'tis true, But there's much that you can do. Even you can plead with men That they buy not slaves again, And that those they have may be Quickly set at liberty. They may hearken what _you_ say, Though from _us_ they turn away. Sometimes, when from school you walk, You can with your playmates talk, Tell them of the slave child's fate, Motherless and desolate. And you can refuse to take Candy, sweetmeat, pie or cake, Saying "no"--unless 'tis free-- "The slave shall not work for me." Thus, dear little children, each May some useful lesson teach;
motor-lorry; and, in front and behind them, an odd procession of
motor-cars of all sizes, bouncing awkwardly from one hollow in the road
to another.
Out of the dark interior of the motor-bus, as we passed it, there groped
a head with a grey slouch hat. It came slowly round on its long, brown,
wrinkled neck until it looked into our car. "Hey, mate," it said, "is
this the track to the races?" Then it smiled at the landscape in general
and withdrew into the interior like a snail into its shell. In this bus
was an Australian Brass Band.
We drew up where there was a collection of motor-cars, lorries, and odd
riding horses along the roadside, exactly as you might see at the picnic
races. We struck inland up one of those glades which the French
foresters leave at intervals running from side to side of their
well-managed forests. The green moss sank like a soft carpet beneath our
feet. The little watergutters bubbled beneath the twigs as we trod
across them. The cowslips and anemones nodded as our boots brushed them.
Hundreds of birds sang in the branches, and the sunlight came down in
shafts from the lacework patches of sky far above, and lit up patches of
grass, and fallen leaves, and moss-covered tree trunks, on which sat a
crowd chiefly of Australians and New Zealanders. As one of the English
correspondents said, "It was just such a forest as Shakespeare wrote
about." Who would have thought that scene believable two years before?
A contest had been arranged between Australasians and Canadians in
Listen, little children, all, Listen to our earnest call: You are very young, 'tis true, But there's much that you can do. Even you can plead with men That they buy not slaves again, And that those they have may be Quickly set at liberty. They may hearken what _you_ say, Though from _us_ they turn away. Sometimes, when from school you walk, You can with your playmates talk, Tell them of the slave child's fate, Motherless and desolate. And you can refuse to take Candy, sweetmeat, pie or cake, Saying "no"--unless 'tis free-- "The slave shall not work for me." Thus, dear little children, each May some useful lesson teach;