THE STREET-GIRLS.
I can truly say that no class we have ever labored for seemed to combine so many elements of human misfortune and to present so many discouraging features as this. They form, indeed, a class by themselves.
[Illustration: THE HOMELESS.]
Their histories are as various as are the different lots of the inhabitants of a populous town. Some have come from the country, from kind and respectable homes, to seek work in the city; here they gradually consume their scanty means, and are driven from one refuge to another, till they stand on the street, with the gayly-lighted house of vice and the gloomy police-station to choose between. Others have sought amusement in the town, and have been finally induced to enter some house of bad character as a boarding-house, and have been thus entrapped; and finally, in despair, and cursed with disease, they break loose, and take shelter even in the prison-cell, if necessary. Others still have abandoned an ill-tempered step-mother or father, and rushed out on the streets to find a refuge, or get employment anywhere.
Drunkenness has darkened the childhood of some, and made home a hideous place, till they have been glad to sleep in the crowded cellar or the bare attic of some thronged "tenement," and then go forth to pick up a living as they could in the great metropolis. Some are orphans, some have parents whom they detest, some are children of misfortune, and others of vice; some are foreigners, some native. They come from the north and the south, the east and the west; all races and countries are represented among them. They are not habitually vicious, or they would not be on the streets. They are unlucky, unfortunate, getting a situation only to lose it, and finding a home, to be soon driven from it. Their habits are irregular, they do not like steady labor, they have learned nothing well, they have no discipline, their clothes are neglected, they have no appreciation of what neatness is, yet if they earn a few shillings extra, they are sore to spend them on some foolish gewgaw. Many of them are pretty and bright, with apparently fine capacities, but inheriting an unusual quantity of the human tendencies to evil. They are incessantly deceived and betrayed, and they as constantly deceive others. Their cunning in concealing their indulgences or vices surpasses all conception. Untruth seems often more familiar to them than truth. Their worst quality is their superficiality. There is no depth either to their virtues or vices. They sin, and immediately repent with alacrity; they live virtuously for years, and a straw seems suddenly to turn them. They weep at the presentation of the divine character in Christ, and pray with fervency; and, the very next day, may ruin their virtue or steal their neighbor's garment, or take to drinking, or set a whole block in ferment with some biting scandal. They seem to be children, but with woman's passion, and woman's jealousy and scathing tongue. They trust a superior as a child; they neglect themselves, and injure body and mind as a child might; they have a child's generosity, and occasional freshness of impulse and desire of purity; but their passions sweep over them with the force of maturity, and their temper, and power of setting persons by the ears, and backbiting, and occasional intensity of hate, belong to a later period of life. Not unfrequently, when real danger or severe sickness arouses them, they show the wonderful qualities of womanhood in a power of sacrifice which utterly forgets self, and a love which shines brightly, eyen through the shadow of death.
But their combination of childishness and undisciplined maturity is an extremely difficult one to manage practically, and exposes them to endless sufferings and dangers. Their condition fifteen years ago seemed a thoroughly hopeless one.
There was then, if we mistake not, but a single refuge in the whole city, where these unfortunate creatures could take shelter, and that was Mr. Pease's Five Points Mission, which contained so many women who had been long in vicious courses, as to make it unsuitable for those who were just on the dividing line.
Our plan for their relief took the shape of
THE GIRLS' LODGING-HOUSE.
It is no exaggeration to say that this instrument of charity and reform has cost us more trouble than all our enterprises together.