f
Saint-Jean-de-Ronde, and immediately under him, two hundred feet from
where he hangs, are the hard pavement, where men appear like pigmies.
Above stands the avenging hunchback ready to hurl him back if he succeed
in climbing over the eaves. So these poor people have ever below them
starvation, eviction, and sickness. Above stands Quasimodo in the form
of a three-headed monster: a soulless landlord, the slave master who
pays only starvation wages, and disease, the natural complement of the
wretched squalor permitted by the one, and the slow starvation
necessarily incident to the prices paid by the other. Their lot is even
more terrible when it is remembered that their fall carries with it the
fate of their loved ones. In addition to the multitude who are condemned
to suffer through uninvited poverty, with no hopeful outlook before
them, there is another class who are constantly on the brink of real
distress, and who are liable at any time, to suffer bitterly because
they are proud-spirited and will almost starve to death before they ask
for aid. Space prevents me from citing more than one illustration of
this character. In an apartment house we found an American woman with a
babe two weeks old and a little girl. The place was scrupulously clean,
something very rare in this zone of life. The woman, of course, was weak
from illness and, as yet, unable to take in any work to speak of. Her
husband has been out of employment for a few weeks, but had just shipped
on board a sailing vessel for a cruise of several months. The woman did
not intimate that they were in great need, as she hoped to soon be
enabled to make some money, and the portion of her husband's wages she
was allowed to draw, paid the rent. A week ago, however, the little girl
came to the Bethel Mission asking for a loaf of bread. "We have had
nothing to eat since Monday morning," she said, "and the little baby
cries all the time because mamma can give it no milk." It was Wednesday
evening when the child visited the Mission. An investigation
substantiated the truth of the child's words. The mother, too proud to
beg, struggled with fate, hoping and praying to be able to succeed
without asking for aid, but seeing her babe starving to death, she
yielded. This case finds many counterparts where a little aid bridges
over a period of frightful want, after which the unfortunate are able,
in a measure, to take care of themselves.

I find it impossible in this paper to