ng thick on their bed-clothes. One
poor creature was found thus one morning by the police, frozen stiff.
They all suffered, as might be expected, terribly from rheumatism.
Liquor, of course, "prevailed." Every woman drank hard, I suppose to
forget her misery; and dreadful quarrels raged among them.

The few men there worked hard at stone-quarrying, but were often
disabled by disease and useless from drunkenness. Many of the women had
been abandoned by their husbands, as their families increased and became
burdensome, or as they themselves grew plain and bad-tempered. Some of
these poor creatures drank still more to heal their wounded affections.
The children, of course, were rapidly following the ways of their
parents. The life of a swill-gatherer, or coal-picker, or _chiffonnier_
in the streets soon wears off a girl's modesty and prepares her for
worse occupation.

Into this community of poor, ignorant, and drunken people I threw
myself, and resolved, with God's aid, to try to do something for them.
Here for years I visited from cabin to cabin, or hunted out every cellar
and attic of the neighboring tenement-houses; standing at death-beds and
sick-beds, seeking to administer consolation and advice, and, aided by
others, to render every species of assistance.

In returning home from these rounds, amidst filth and poverty, I
remember that I was frequently so depressed and exhausted as to throw
myself flat upon the rug in front of the fire, scarcely able to move.
The discouraging feature in such visits as I was making, and which must
always exist in similar efforts, is that one has no point of religious
contact with these people.

Among all the hundreds of families I knew and visited I never met but
two that were Protestants. To all words of spiritual warning or help
there came the chilling formalism of the ignorant Roman Catholic in
reply, implying that certain outward acts made the soul right with its
Creator. The very inner ideas of our spiritual life of free love towards
God, true repentance and trust in a Divine Redeemer, seemed wanting in
their minds. I never had the least ambition to be a proselytizer, and
never tried to convert them, and I certainly had no prejudice against
the Romanists; on the contrary, it has been my fortune in Europe to
enjoy the intercourse of some most spiritual-minded Catholics. But these
poor people seemed stamped with the spiritual lifelessness of Romanism.
At how many a lonely death-