the children.

As these ladies, many of them of remarkable character and culture, began
to show the fruits of a high civilization to these poor little
barbarians, the thought seemed to strike them--though hardly capable of
being expressed--that here was a goodness and piety they had never known
or conceived. This offspring of poverty and crime veiled their vices and
bad habits before these angels. They felt a new impulse--to be worthy of
their noble friends. The idea of unselfish Love dawned on their souls;
they softened and became respectful. So it continued; each day the wild
little beggars became more disciplined and controlled; they began to
like study and industry; they were more anxious to be clean and neatly
dressed; they checked their tongues, and, in some degree, their tempers;
they showed affection and gratitude to their teachers; their minds
awakened; most of all, their moral faculties. The truths of Religion or
of morals, especially when dramatized in stories and incidents, reached
them.

And no words can adequately picture the amount of loving service and
patient sacrifice which was poured out by these ladies in this effort
among the poor of the Fourth Ward. They never spared themselves or their
means. Some came down every day to help in the school; some twice in the
week; they were there in all weathers, and never wearied. Three of the
number offered up their lives in these labors of humanity, and died in
harness.

A most gifted intellectual family, the S----s, supplied some of our most
devoted workers; the wife, since deceased, of one of our leading
merchants and public men, himself a man much loved for his generosity,
occupied the place of one of the Directresses; the wife of a prominent
physician was our Treasurer. A young lady of fortune, since dead, Miss
G., took the hardest labors upon herself. The wife of a gentleman since
Governor and United States Senator, was in especial charge of the house,
and dreaded no labor of humanity, however disagreeable. Two others,
sisters, who represented one of our most honored historical families,
but whose characters needed no help of genealogy to make them esteemed
by all, threw themselves into the work with characteristic earnestness.
Another of that family, which has furnished the pioneer of all
reform-work among the youthful criminals, and in criminal law, and which
in the early days of our history so often led public affairs, visited
from house to house amo