"Another criticism which might be made is that the paupers are provided with no regular religious service. At Deer Island there is a paid chaplain, and although his duties do not call him to the almshouse, he sometimes goes over. There is a large room called the chapel, and here religious services are held when there is any one to lead them. A Catholic priest goes down twice a week to minister to the wants of the Catholics, who are in the majority; something like ninety-five per cent being of that persuasion. The fact remains, however, that the city of Boston does not give its paupers the benefit of any religious service or guidance. As was said by one lady on hearing the facts: 'In the eyes of the city it is a greater crime to be a pauper than a criminal.'"
Rev. Dr. Frederick B. Allen, of the Episcopal City Mission of Boston, writing in the Herald of August 31, says:—
"In the management of human beings, especially the aged, the infirm, the insane, and the sick, there is needed a wise and tender consideration which sheer business management is apt to miss.
"The sociological problems of pauperism and crime, the study of successful methods in other cities and other lands, the deep sense of the sacredness of our humanity, even in its weakest and most unfortunate members,—these make their demand for the aid of men and women to whom these questions of human life and death are at least as controlling as the reduction of the city tax rate.
"Were there any such board of advisers to do in our city institutions what the State Charities Aid Society has done for New York State, we should not have been confronted, as we now are, with poorly planned, inadequate, and badly managed buildings, lack of discrimination in those permitted to occupy them, insufficient and untrained nurses for the sick, lack of proper ventilation and food, and everywhere the absence of devoted personal, human, moral oversight and control.
"I second most positively Dr. Banks' assertion that 'an advisory board of leading citizens, on which are three or four level-headed and humane women, would work the revolution that is needed in the treatment of" our brothers and sisters, the Boston paupers."'"
XII.
THE GOLD GOD OF MODERN SOCIETY.
"When wealth no mere shall rest in mounded heaps.
But smit with freer light shall slowly melt
In many streams to fatten lower lands,
And light shall spread, and man be liker man
Thro' all the seasons of the golden year."
No one who is in touch with the throbbing life of this time can fail to perceive that this is an age peculiarly given up to the worship of Mammon. The literature of our day bears certain evidence of this fact. Scribner's Magazine of last year contained, under the title of "Jerry," a painfully realistic and comprehensive story, dealing with the debauch of a noble character by the fascination of gold. Jerry belonged to the "poor white trash" of the Cumberland Mountains, and on the death of his mother, being cruelly treated at home, he ran away to the West. After many wanderings, the little wayfarer, tired out and almost dead, fell into the hands of a quaint old miner who was digging and hoarding up gold in his cabin in the Northwestern Mountains. In the midst of this wild region, educated by a kind-hearted physician, Jerry grew up to be a young man of peculiarly noble and heroic character. He remembered with painful distinctness that he belonged to the poorest of the common people, and the ambition of his life was to uplift his own class.