This man was killed by a train. Sure as was his instinct and keen his eye, he was nevertheless caught one evening, and at the very place where he deemed himself most sure. His head was completely obliterated, and he had to be identified by his clothes. When he was removed, another eager applicant was given his place, and now he is walking the same tunnel with a half-dozen others. If you question these men they will all tell you the same story. They do not want to do what they are doing, but it is better than nothing.
Rough necessity, a sense of duty, and behold, we are as bricks and stones, to be put anywhere in the wall, at the bottom of the foundation in the dark, or at the top in the light. And who chooses for us?
THE REALIZATION OF AN IDEAL
Any quality to which the heart of man aspires it may attain. Would you have virtue in the world, establish it yourself. Would you have tenderness, be tender. It is only by acting in the name of that which you deem to be an ideal that its realization is brought to pass.
In the crowded section of the lower East Side of New York, where poverty reigns most distressingly, there stands a church which is a true representative of the religion of the poor. It is an humble building, crowded in among the flats and tenements that make the homely neighborhood homelier, and sends a crude and distorted spire soaring significantly toward the sky. There is but little light inside, for that which the crowded flat-buildings about does not shut out is weakened by the dusty stained-glass windows through which it has to pass. An arched and dark-angled ceiling lends a sense of dignity to it and over it all broods the solemn atmosphere of simplicity and faith.
It is in this church (and no doubt others of a similar character elsewhere) that is constantly recurring the miracle of earthly faith. Here it is, hour after hour, that one sees entering out of the welter and the din of the streets those humble examples of the poor and ignorant, who come here out of the cares of many other states to rest a while and pray.
The Realization of an Ideal