ings have secret passages connecting them
with others of a similar character. These passages are known only to
criminals, and are used by them for their vile purposes. Offenders may
safely hide from the police in these wretched abodes. Every room is
crowded with people. Sometimes as many as a dozen are packed into a
single apartment. Decency and morality soon fade away here. Drunkenness
is the general rule. Some of the dwellers here never leave their abodes,
but remain in them the year round stupefied with liquor, to procure which
their wives, husbands or children will beg or steal. Thousands of
children are born here every year, and thousands happily die in the first
few months of infancy. Those who survive rarely see the sun until they
are able to crawl out into the streets. Both old and young die at a
fearful rate. They inhale disease with every breath.

The exact number of vagrant and destitute children to be found in the
Five Points is not known. There are thousands, however. Some have
placed the estimate as high as 15,000, and some higher. They are chiefly
of foreign parentage. They do not attend the public schools, for they
are too dirty and ragged. The poor little wretches have no friends but
the attaches of the missions. The missionaries do much for them, but
they cannot aid all. Indeed, they frequently have great difficulty in
inducing the parents of the children to allow them to attend their
schools. The parents are mostly of the Roman Catholic faith, and the
clergy of that Church have from the first exerted their entire influence
to destroy the missions, and put a stop to their work. They feared the
effect of these establishments upon the minds of the children, and,
strange as it may seem, preferred to let them starve in the street, or
come to worse ending, rather than risk the effects of education and
Protestant influence. To those who know what a great and blessed work
these missions have done, this statement will no doubt be astounding.
Yet it is true.

In spite of the missions, however, the lot of the majority of the Five
Points children is very sad. Their parents are always poor, and unable
to keep them in comfort. Too frequently they are drunken brutes, and
then the life of the little one is simply miserable. In the morning the
child is thrust out of its terrible home to pick rags, bones, cinders, or
anything that can be used or sold, or to beg or steal, for many are
carefully