neglectful of the condition of its exiles, when an outlay of a much smaller sum would ensure a prevention of a large proportion of the crime that emenates from the slums; while at the same time it would mean a new world of life, happiness, and measureless possibilities for the thousands who now exist in hopeless gloom. In a small room fronting an interior court we found a man' whose face bore the stamp of that "hope long deferred which maketh the heart sick." He is, I am informed, a strictly temperate, honest, and industrious workman. Up to the time of his wife's illness and death, which occurred last summer, the family lived in a reasonably comfortable manner, as the husband found no difficulty in securing work on the sea. When the wife died, however, circumstances changed. She left six little children, one almost an infant. The father could not go to sea, leaving his little flock without a protector, to fall the victims of starvation, and since then he has worked whenever he could get employment loading vessels, or at anything he could find. For the past six weeks he has been practically without work, and the numerous family of little ones have suffered for life's necessities. His rent is two dollars and a quarter a week. In the attic in another tenement we found a widow† weeping and working by the side of a little cradle where lay a sick child, whose large luminous eyes shone with almost phosphorescent brilliancy from great cavernous sockets, as they wandered from one to another, with a wistful, soulquerying gaze. Its forehead was large and prominent, so much so that looking at the upper part of the head one would little imagine how terrible the emaciation of the body, which *NOTE ON ILLUSTRATION OUT OF WORK. The young man photographed in his dismal lodging is a widower with six small children; he is strictly sober, an American by birth, but parents were Scotch and Irish. Until the illness and death of the wife last summer, everything went reasonably well. The husband and father followed the sea and managed to provide for his family, even saving a little. The wife's sickness and burial expenses ate up all and more than he had saved, while being left with so many little children and no one to look after them, he found it impossible to engage in sea voyages; he was compelled to seek work which would enable him to be home at night. This winter, work has been very slack; for six weeks he has only been able to obtain employment for a few days; meantime his rent, which is two_dollars and a quarter a week, has eaten up almost all the man could earn. Through the aid of the Baptist Bethel Mission and The Arena Relief Fund, this family has been provided with food and clothes. *NOTE ON ILLUSTRATION OF PORTUGUESE WIDOW IN ATTIC. In an attic with slanting roof and skylight window lives a poor widow with her little family of four, a full description of which is given elsewhere. The long-continued sickness of the little child has made the struggle for rent and bread very terrible, and had it not been for assistance rendered at intervals, eviction or starvation, or both, must have resulted. This woman and her children are sober, industrious, and intelligent. Cases like this are by no means rare in this city which claims to be practically free from poverty. was little more than skin and bones, speaking more eloquently than words of the ravages of slow starvation and wasting disease. The immediate cause of the poor woman's tears was explained to us in broken English, substantially as follows: She had just returned from the dispensary where she had been unsuccessful in her effort to have a physician visit her child, owing to her inability to pay the quarter of a dollar demanded for the visit. After describing as best she could the condition of the invalid, the doctor had given her two bottles of medicine and a prescription blank on which he had written directions for her to get a truss that would cost her two dollars and a half at the drug store. She had explained to the physician that owing to the illness of her child she had fallen a week and a half in arrears in rent; that the agent for the tenement had notified her that if one week's rent was not paid on Saturday she would be evicted, which meant death to her child, so she could not buy the truss. To which the doctor replied, "You must get the truss and put it on before giving anything from either bottle, or the medicine will kill your child." "If I give the medicine," she repeated showing us the bottles, "before I put the truss on, he says it will kill my child," and the tears ran swiftly down her sad but intelligent face. The child was so emaciated that the support would inevitably have produced terrible sores in a short time. I am satisfied that had the physician seen its condition, he would not have had a heart to order it. I thought as I studied the anxious and sorrowful countenance of that mother, how hard, indeed, is the lot of the very poor. They have to buy coal by the basketful and pay almost double price, likewise food and all life's necessities. They are compelled to live in frightful disease-fostering quarters, and pay exorbitant rents for the accommodations they receive. When sick they are not always free from imposition, even when they receive aid in the name of charity, and sometimes theology under the cloak of religion oppresses them. This last thought had been suggested by seeing in our rounds some half-starved women dropping pennies into the hands of Sisters of Charity, who were even here in the midst of terrible want, exacting from the starving money for a church whose coffers groan with wealth. O religion, ineffably radiant and exalting in thy pure influence, how thou art often debased by thy professed followers! How much injustice is meted. |