A ROUGH-LOOKING CROWD
of both sexes, some of them younger and apparently less hardened than the rest; all had been drinking heavily, but they received the clergyman with high good humor, which they carried so far as to interrupt Mr. ⸺ when he began the funeral service with groans, sighs, and remarks which were judged appropriate. Thus the versicle, “Man that is born of a woman is full of trouble.” Mr. ⸺ was interrupted by remarks such as, “Thrue for yer riverence, and its meself knows it!” “His riverence is right, and may the hivens be his bed.” All went tolerably well till Mr. ⸺ proposed to offer a prayer, and requested all present to kneel. Now all the assistants at this strange funeral were sufficiently sober to keep their feet, and had the Presbyterian ritual been observed, all would have gone well. The men managed to kneel—but the women, once they tried to kneel, lost the center of gravity and toppled over on the floor, whereon when Mr. ⸺ left the place, they were sprawling in the vain effort to rise!
The clergyman whose opinions I am now quoting was convinced that in slum-life there are many cases of guiltless, undeserved poverty, not due to drink nor to vice, but to other causes. As an instance of this, he told me that he had been informed that a poor, hardworking widow and her three little girls, living in a room in a tenement house on ⸺ street, were in a state of destitution. He proceeded thither at once. In a bare, unfurnished room, without a spark of fire, though it was February of a severe winter, were three little girls, each covered by a single ragged cotton garment. Their father was in a drunkard’s grave; their mother, a frail, weak woman, was out of work. She could not earn enough to pay her weekly rent for that poor place and provide a loaf of bread daily for her children. It lay on the table ready for them to help themselves, but the poor little things had but little appetite. The youngest was five years old, the eldest seven. They lay in bed all day under the shelter of a single coverlet, for they had