THE MAGIC WAND
A School Board Officer's Story by George R Sims

Horrible den's Sir aren't they
This is one of my daily rounds
In here in such awful places
That child life most abounds
We ferret from roof to basement
In search of our tiny prey
Were down on their homes directly
If they happen to stop away

Knock at the Door ? Pooh nonsense
They wouldn't know what nit meant
Come in and look about you
They'l think you're a school board gent
Did you ever see such hovels ?
Dirty and damp and small
Look at the rotten flooring
Look at the Filthy wall

That's lucky the place is empty
The whole of the family is out
This is one of me fav'rit cases
Just give a glance about
There;s a father and four young children
And Sally the eldest's eight
They're horribly poor – half starving
And they live in a shocking state

The Father gets drunk and beats them
The Mother she deid last year
There's a story about her dying
I fancy you'd like to hear
She was one of our backward pupils
Was Sally the eldest child
A poor little London blossom
That the alley had not defiled

She was on at the lane last winter
She played in the pantomime
A lot of our School Board children
Get on at the Christmas time
She was one of a group of fairies
And her wand was the wand up there
There in the filthy corner
Behind the broken chair

The gilt of the star is faded
And the tinsel's peeled away
But once in the glaring lime-light
It gleamed like a jewelled spray
A fairy's wand in a lodging
In a slum like this looks queer
But you'll guess why they let her keep it
When you know why the wand came here

Her Mother was ill that winter
Her Father the drunken sot
Was spending his weekly earnings
And all that the fairy got
The woman lay sick and moaning
Dying by slow degrees
Of a cruel and wasting fever
That rages in dens like these

But night after night went Sally
Half-starved to the splended scene
Where she waved a wand of magic
As a Lilliput fairy queen
She stood in the Land of Shadows
Where a demon worked his spell
At a wave of her wand he vanished
And the scene was changed as well

She'd a couple of lines to utter
Which bade the gloom give way
To the Golden Home of Blisses
In the Land of the Shining Day
She gazed on the lime light splendours
That grew as she waved her wand
And she thought of the cheerless cellar
Old Drury's walls beyond

And when in her ragged garments
No longer a potent fay
She knelt by the retched pallet
Where her dying mother lay
She though as she stooped and kissed her
And looked in her ghastly face
Of the wand that could change a dungeon
To a sweet and lovely place

She was only a wretched outcast
A waif of the London slums
It's little of truth and knowledge
To the ears of such children comes
She fancied her wand was truly
Possesed of a magic charm
That it punished the wicked people
And sheilded the good from harm

Her mother grew slowly weaker
The depths of the winter came
And the teeth of the biting weather
Seized on her wasted frame
And Sally who saw her sinking
Came home from the Lane one night
With her shawl wrpped over something
And her face a ghastly white

She had hidden the wand and brought it
The wand that could do so much
She crept to the sleeping woman
Who moved not at her touch
She stooped to hear her breathing
It was oh so faint and low
Then raising her wand she waved it
Like a fairy to and fro

Her well known lines she uttered
That bade the gloom give way
To the Golden |Home of Blisses
In the land of Shining day
She murmured o Mother dearest
You shall look on the splendid scene
While a man from the Playhouse watched her
Who had followed the fairy queen

He thought she had stolen something
And brought it away to sell
He had followed her home and caught her
And then he'd a tale to tell
He told how he watched her waving
The wand by her mothers bed
O'er a face where the faint grey shadow
Of the last long sleep had spread

She's still at school is Sally
And she's heard of The Realms of Light
So she clings to the childish fancy
That entered her head that night
She say that her poor sick mother
By the wand was charmed away
From Earth to the Home of Blisses
In the Land of Eternal Day