sting them
as "vagrants," when the mothers would beg them off from the good-natured
Justices, and promise to train them better in future. They were
evidently fast training, however, for the most abandoned life. It seemed
me if I could only get the refinement, education, and Christian
enthusiasm of the better classes fairly to work here among these
children, these terrible evils might be corrected at least for the next
generation.

I accordingly went about from house to house among ladies whom I had
known, and, representing the condition of the Ward, induced them to
attend a meeting of ladies to be held at the house of a prominent
physician, whose wife had kindly offered her rooms.

For some months I had attempted to prepare the public mind for these
labors by incessant writing for the daily papers, by lectures and by
sermons in various pulpits. Experience soon showed that the most
effective mode of making real the condition of the poorest class, was by
relating incidents from real life which continually presented
themselves.

The rich and fortunate had hardly conceived the histories of poverty,
suffering, and loneliness which were constantly passing around them.

The hope and effort of the writer was to connect the two extremes of
society in sympathy, and carry the forces of one class down to lift up
the other. For this two things were necessary--one to show the duty
which Christ especially teaches of sacrifice to the poor for His sake,
and the value which He attaches to each human soul; and the other to
free the whole, as much as possible, from any sectarian or dogmatic
character. Nothing but "the enthusiasm of humanity" inspired by Christ
could lead the comfortable and the fastidious to such disagreeable
scenes and hard labors as would meet them here. It was necessary to feel
that many comforts most be foregone, and much leisure given up, for this
important work. Very unpleasant sights were to be met with, coarse
people to be encountered, and rude children managed; the stern facts of
filth, vice, and crime to be dealt with.

It was not to be a mere holiday-work, or a sudden gush of sentiment;
but, to be of use, it must be patiently continued, week by week, and
month by month, and year by year, with some faint resemblance to that
patience and love which we believed a Higher One had exercised towards
us. But, with this inspiration, as carefully as possible, all dogmatic
limitation must be avoided. All sects were i