The old plea of the drunkard the world over. Look at these weary women, with dark circles about their eyes, nervous almost to insanity, ready to "cry" at the slightest notice, the blue veins on their temples looking as if they were painted outside the skin. Look at their long, thin, sick-looking fingers, and their slow, weary steps, from which all the spring and elasticity of youth has long since departed. See them swallowing "pills" by the dozen, and trying every quack medicine afloat, instead of resisting the enemy which has done all or two-thirds the mischief.
Of course, the world over, bad food is the sworn ally of drunkenness in every shape, and these poor girls have much to contend against in that shape.
Then, again, I think few women can long preserve their self-respect amid dirty surroundings. One often sees with a pained pleasure—if this expression is not paradoxical—their faint attempts to make light out of darkness, and beauty out of deformity, in the solitary plant, struggling for life, and its one slant ray of sunshine, outside some tenement-house window. Or, if you enter, a rude print upon the soiled wall, of some saint, or child, or some scene in nature; upon which latter the weary eyes often turn with a vain longing at realization. These sights, to the humanitarian, who is trying to solve life's great problem for the benefit of those on whom it bears so heavily, are suggestive. It is clear, at least, that woman, from choice, would not be amid dirt or noisome odors. What man would become, without her refining influence, and the touch of her reformatory fingers, and her unpolluted sense of smell, of which tobacco has deprived him, it is not my purpose now to consider, although I have very firmly rooted ideas on this subject. But there is a class of women among those whom adverse circumstances have thrown into such places, upon whom it bears the more hardly, because they have been accustomed all their life to the reverse of this.
Hundreds so situated, sunk out of sight of former acquaintances by cruel want, bear it bravely, heroically, while struggling hopefully and one-handed, against discouraging odds, for better days. Some, alas! go down, soul-sick, body-weary, under the unequal contest, as we who live in this great, swarming city know. Benevolent ladies in New York are awake to this; and the question arising, What can we do for such? has been answered, by energetic and Christian ladies, by the establishment of boarding-houses, in respectable and pleasant neighborhoods; with board at prices but little higher than those which they were obliged to pay in the disagreeable localities above mentioned. Indeed, in some urgent and genuine cases, upon application, the applicant has been received upon merely nominal board, in recognition of the Bible fact that "bricks cannot be made without straw." In one such institution, I lately spent a most profitable and delightful morning. It is located on Washington square—one of the most delightful as well as central spots in New York City—by ladies of wealth and position in society, and, better still, ladies of intelligence and piety,—executive ladies, who do something beside talk, and know how, and when, and where to act for this great and humane object.
With such a good and solid foundation, they have moved on, as their strength and means have permitted. I passed from one to another of the pleasant rooms of the young ladies, who occupied apartments here, and who were, at that hour in the forenoon, scattered far and wide over the city; some as teachers in schools and in families, some as pupils in the School of Design, or the ward schools, while many were occupied as dress-makers, sempstresses, copyists, &c. I looked around me at the clean white little beds, at the books, at the prints upon the walls, at the climbing ivy and flowering plants, upon which the sun was shining as if in blessing, at the innumerable little tokens of personality, which are so suggestive to the stranger on entering an unoccupied apartment; those little things which say to you as you read the title of a genuine and well-thumbed book, "Ah! here lives one who thinks;" or you see by the thousand little refined touches, and orderly and wise arrangement of clothing and furniture, the neat thrift of woman expressed, and you feel thankful that they will not come home, when the day's toil is over, to unholy sounds, and unclean sights, and bad air, and loathsome food. You thank God that such women can keep up heart for their exhaustive and unaccustomed toil, by the certainty of a safe and respectable shelter over their heads, when night draws its curtain over the temptations and the wickedness of this great city. You are thankful that their self-respect is not only preserved in this most important way, but by intercourse and contact with the ladies of worth and refinement who have the institution in charge and at heart.
If this is not a noble institution, what is? I do not call it a charity. It were wrong so to designate it. From out that threshold pass noble, self-supporting girls, putting to shame the useless lives of the idle, paniered ladies who remorselessly wear out the souls of husbands, fathers, and brothers, in the vain struggle for fashionable supremacy. No: this Institution is a help, not a charity. Its object is to help those who wish to help themselves.
Upon one of the walls of a little room there I saw a representation of the "Grecian Bend." I looked on this picture, and on that, and my eyes were moist with gratitude for one, and with womanly shame for the other.
Do you ever think how much work a little child does in a day? How, from sunrise to sunset, the dear little feet patter round—to us—so aimlessly. Climbing up here, kneeling down there, running to another place, but never still. Twisting and turning, rolling and reaching and doubling, as if testing every bone and muscle for their future uses. It is very curious to watch it. One who does so may well understand the deep breathing of the rosy little sleeper, as, with one arm tossed over its curly head, it prepares for the next day's gymnastics. A busy creature is a little child.