e notorious rogues' den in Laurens Street--"Rotten Row"--where, it was
said, no drove of animals could pass by and keep its numbers intact;
and, farther above, the community of young garroters and burglars around
Hamersley Street and Cottage Place. And, still more north, the dreadful
population of youthful ruffians and degraded men and women in "Poverty
Lane," near Sixteenth and Seventeenth streets and Ninth Avenue, which
subsequently ripened into the infamous "Nineteenth-street Gang."

On the east side, again, was "Dutch Hill," near Forty-second Street, the
squatters' village, whence issued so many of the little peddlers of the
city, and the Eleventh Ward and "Corlear's Hook," where the
"copper-pickers," and young wood-stealers, and the thieves who beset the
ship-yards congregated; while below, in the Sixth Ward, was the Italian
quarter, where houses could be seen crowded with children, monkeys,
dogs, and all the appurtenances of the corps of organ-grinders, harpers,
and the little Italian street-sweepers, who then, ignorant and
untrained, wandered through our down-town streets and alleys.

Near each one of these "fever nests," and centres of ignorance, crime,
and poverty, it was our hope and aim eventually to place some agency
which should be a moral and physical disinfectant--a seed of reform and
improvement amid the wilderness of vice and degradation.

It seemed a too enthusiastic hope to be realized; and, at times, the
waves of misery and guilt through these dark places appeared too
overwhelming and irresistible for any one effort or association of
efforts to be able to stem or oppose them.

How the somewhat ardent hope was realized, and the plan carried out,
will appear hereafter.

The first special effort that we put forth was the providing of work for
these children, by opening

WORKSHOPS.

These experiments, of which we made many at different times, were not
successful. Our object was to render the shops self-supporting. But the
irregularity of the class attending them, the work spoiled, and the
necessity of competing with skilled labor and often with machinery, soon
put us behind. We had one workshop for pegging boots and shoes in
Wooster Street, where we soon got employment for numbers of street-boys;
but a machine was suddenly invented for pegging shoes, which drove us
out of the field. We tried then paper box and bag-making, carpentering,
and other branches; but it may b