y-one, and a good deal larger than that in winter. The
boys came from as far south as Houston Street, nearly a mile below, and
from Forty-second Street, a mile and half to the north, in all kinds of
weather.

The doors of the reading-room stand wide open on Sunday as on week-day
nights. With singing, and talks on serious or religious subjects in a vein
the boys can follow, they try to give to the proceedings a Sabbath turn of
which the impression may abide with them. The regular Sunday-School
exercises have, I am told by the Superintendent, been abandoned, and the
present less formal, but more effective, programme substituted. One has
need of being wiser than the serpent if he would build effectually in this
field among the poor of many races and faiths that swarm in New York's
tenements, and he must make his foundation very broad. The great thing for
the boys is that the room is not closed against them on the very night in
all the week when they need it most. I think we are coming at last to
understand what a trap we have been digging for the young in our great
cities, when we thought to save them from temptation, by shutting every
door but that of the church against them on the day when the devil was
busiest finding mischief for their idle hands to do, while narrowing that
down to the size of a wicket-gate with our creeds and confessions. The
poor bury their dead on Sunday to save the loss of a day's pay. Poverty
has given over their one day of rest to their sorrows. Is it likely that
any attempt to rob it of its few harmless joys should win them over? It is
the shadow of bigotry and intolerance falling across it that has turned
healthy play into rioting and moral ruin. Open the museums, the libraries,
and the clubs on Sunday, and the church that draws the bolt will find the
tide of reawakened interest that will set in strong enough to fill its own
pews, too, to overflowing.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

Under the heading "Just one of God's Children," one of the morning
newspapers told the story last winter of a newsboy at the Brooklyn Bridge,
who fell in a fit with his bundle of papers under his arm, and was carried
into the waiting-room by the bridge police. They sent for an ambulance,
but before it came the boy was out selling papers again. The reporters
asked the little dark-eyed news-woman at the bridge entrance which boy it
was.

"Little Maher it was," she answered.

"Who takes care