There is a world, however, and one pretty closely mixed up with this, though it never shows itself to one who has no place in it, the birds of whose air have neither storehouse nor barn, but are just such thoughtless cherubs--thoughtless for themselves, that is--as wee Sir Gibbie.

It would be useless to attempt convincing the mere economist that this great city was a little better, a little happier, a little merrier, for the presence in it of the child, because he would not, even if convinced of the fact, recognize the gain; but I venture the assertion to him, that the conduct of not one of its inhabitants was the worse for the example of Gibbie's apparent idleness; and that not one of the poor women who now and then presented the small baronet with a penny, or a bit of bread, or a scrap of meat, or a pair of old trousers--shoes nobody gave him, and he neither desired nor needed any--ever felt the poorer for the gift, or complained that she should be so taxed.
Positively or negatively, then, everybody was good to him, and Gibbie felt it; but what could make up for the loss of his Paradise, the bosom of a father?
Drunken father as he was, I know of nothing that can or ought to make up for such a loss, except that which can restore it--the bosom of the Father of fathers.
He roamed the streets, as all his life before, the whole of the day, and part of the night; he took what was given him, and picked up what he found.

There were some who would gladly have brought him within the bounds of an ordered life; he soon drove them to despair, however, for the streets had been his nursery, and nothing could keep him out of them.

But the sparrow and the rook are just as respectable in reality, though not in the eyes of the hen-wife, as the egg-laying fowl, or the dirt-gobbling duck; and, however Gibbie's habits might shock the ladies of Mr.Sclater's congregation who sought to civilize him, the boy was no more about mischief in the streets at midnight, than they were in their beds.

They collected enough for his behoof to board him for a year with an old woman who kept a school, and they did get him to sleep one night in her house.