INTERVIEWS WITH CLERGYMEN.
For the purpose of getting the views of a class of gentlemen whose profession brings them frequently in contact with the vicious classes of our city, News reporters waited on several clergymen. Those selected were men who were known not to be shirkers from this unpleasant portion of a pastor’s duties. The result will be found below.
A CITY MISSIONARY’S EXPERIENCES.
An evangelist and city missionary of some years experience in Toronto was interviewed. “You cannot,” he said “tell what the Toronto slums are like, seeing them by day light. You enter a tenement house on Duchess or Lombard streets in the forenoon or at noon. All looks quiet enough. The women, generally of middle age, are standing at the door exchanging gossip with their neighbors. Some appearance of household work has been going on, and as noon approaches there is an odor of onion stew or fried pork. We enter. You are always safe in these regions when accompanied by a policeman or a reporter or a city missionary, but your visit would be much more favorably received if your escort be of either of the two latter classes. The furniture of the living room is of the cheapest and simplest description of second-hand ware, the tables are battered and sodden with the smear of innumerable drinking bouts. The chairs are evidently more often used as missiles propelled through the air by hostile hands than for the peaceful purpose of resting the human body. The crazy old windows are grimy with dirt; grimy are the floors, the ceilings, the ricketty stairways leading to unknown dens above. Almost all of these tenement houses are a perfect baby-burrow of children, untaught, unwashed, unkempt, enfants perdus of the gutter, the protoplasm out of which the great Sin and the yet greater Misery of our city is certain to shape itself in the future! Presently, three or four able-bodied young men come in from what they call work. A sinister-looking young woman in frowsy dress, the cut across her whisky-sodden face telling its tale of last night’s revel, joins the group. The eldest child is sent with a cracked jug for beer to the corner saloon. As a rule, these people fare considerably better than the poorer ones among the respectable sober working people; they live from hand to mouth; the only text in the gospel which they obey implicitly being “Let the morrow take thought for itself.” When they are not starving they are generally well supplied with bread, meat, tea and vegetables; nor are such luxuries as pies and cake unknown to them, to say nothing of malt or spirituous liquor, though, as a rule, the drinking sets in most heavily at night. At about 10 p.m. on Saturday or Sunday to see one of these establishments at full blast! Then
DRINK REIGNS UNCONTROLLED.
Of other immorality there is comparatively little; the scorching breath of the rum king will tolerate no rival! Money has been procured, if in no other way by pawning dress or tools to the people of the house, for every one of these tenement dens is, as a rule, an unlicensed groggery and pawnbroker’s shop! The debauch which ensues nearly always ends in a free fight, in which the most furious combatants are often the women.”
“Have you ever recognized in the night life of the city slums any man or woman you have known in better circumstances in this city?”
“Yes unquestionably, and in more cases than people would think who do not look below the surface for the three sorriest sins that enter hell, drunkenness, laziness and dishonesty, have the same effect on the educated and the uneducated. Take a recent case. Early last month I was called on to visit, not for the first time, a young married woman whom I had known in days when she had every right to the title of lady. I found her occupying a room on the rear ground floor of a house on Teraulay street. Her only baby, fortunately for herself and for it, lay dead. The father had more than once thrown it at the mother in a fit of drunken passion. I gave her money enough to provide decently for the funeral and promised to return two days afterwards, in order to conduct some simple sort of funeral ceremony.
“When I first knew this woman, then a girl years ago, her father was still living a prosperous hotel-keeper on Yonge street, a prominent church member, and an affectionate father who spared no pains on his daughter’s education. Aggie grew up to be a bright engaging girl, with a charming figure, expressive hazel eyes, and long curling dark brown hair that reached to her waist. She was especially clever at ciphering, and acted for some time as book-keeper for a well known Toronto firm. She became an accomplished pianist, and sang for some years in one of our best church choirs. Her next misfortune after her birth in this evil world eighteen years before was her father’s death. Her mother was left in fairly good circumstances, and the owner of a respectable house on George street. She was a good-natured but weak minded woman, the instincts of hotel-life were strong upon her, and as a matter of course, she took to keeping boarders. She kept a good house, and good table, for little Aggie was smart and looked after all that, and there were gay times when