aid Mr. Dinneford. "In other words,
what do you think the best practical way to purify this region?"

"If you draw burning brands and embers close together, your fire grows
stronger; if you scatter them apart, it will go out," answered the
missionary. "Moral and physical laws correspond to each other. Crowd
bad men and women together, and they corrupt and deprave each other.
Separate them, and you limit their evil power and make more possible for
good the influence of better conditions. Let me give you an instance: A
man and his wife who had lived in a wretched way in one of the poorest
hovels in Briar street for two years, and who had become idle and
intemperate, disappeared from among us about six months ago. None of
their neighbors knew or cared much what had become of them. They had
two children. Last week, as I was passing the corner of a street in the
south-western part of the city in which stood a row of small new houses,
a neatly-dressed woman came out of a store with a basket in her hand. I
did not know her, but by the brightening look in her face I saw that she
knew me.

"'Mr. Paulding,' she said, in a pleased way, holding out her hand; 'you
don't know me,' she added, seeing the doubt in my face. 'I am Mrs.--.'

"'Impossible!' I could not help exclaiming.

"'But it's true, Mr. Paulding,' she averred, a glow of pleasure on her
countenance. 'We've turned over a new leaf.'

"'So I should think from your appearance,' I replied. 'Where do you
live?'

"'In the third house from the corner,' pointing to the neat row of small
brick houses I have mentioned. 'Come and look at our new home. I want to
tell you about it!'

"I was too much pleased to need a second invitation.

"'I've got as clean steps as my neighbors,' she said, with pride in her
voice, 'and shades to my windows, and a bright door-knob. It wasn't so
in Briar street. One had no heart there. Isn't this nice?'

"And she glanced around the little parlor we had entered.

"It was nice, compared to the dirty and disorderly place they had called
their home in Briar street. The floor was covered with a new ingrain
carpet. There were a small table and six cane-seat chairs in the room,
shades at the windows, two or three small pictures on the walls and some
trifling ornaments on the mantel. Everything was clean and the air of
the room sweet.

"'This is my little Emma,' she said as a cleanly-dressed child came into
the room; 'You remember she was in the sc