case gives in its
unutterably miserable details, turns away in a despair only matched by
that of the worker. Yet they are here, this army of incompetents,
marching through torture to their graves; and till we have found some
method by which torture may lessen, these lives as they vanish pass on
to the army of avengers, and will face us by and by when excuses fall
away and Justice comes face to face with the weak souls that failed in
the flesh to know its nature or its demand.

CHAPTER TENTH.

BETWEEN THE RIVERS.

"The nearer the river the nearer to hell."

It was a strong word, and the big chest from which it issued held more
of the same sort,--a tall worker, carpenter apparently, hurrying on with
his box of tools and talking, as he went, with a companion half his
size, but with quite his power of expression, interjecting strange
German oaths as he listened to the story poured out to him. With that
story we have at present nothing to do. But the first words lingered,
and they linger still as the summary of such life as is lived by many
workers on east and west sides alike.

Were the laws governing a volume of this nature rigidly observed, the
present phase of this investigation could hardly be the point at which
to stop for any detail of how these workers live from day to day. But as
the search has gone on through these hours when Christmas joy is in the
air, when the smallest shop hangs out its Christmas token, and the great
stores are thronged with buyers far into the evening, I think of the
lives in which Christmas has no place, of the women for whom all days
are alike, each one the synonyme of relentless, unending toil; of the
children who have never known a childhood and for whom Christmas is but
a name. For even when mission and refuge have done their utmost, there
is still the army unreached by any effort and in great part unreachable,
no method recorded in any system of the day having power to drag them to
the light and thus make known to us what manner of creature it is that
cowers in shadowy places and has no foothold in the path we call
progress. That their own ignorance holds them in these shadows, bound as
with chains; that even a little more knowledge would break the bonds, in
part at least, has no present bearing on the fact that thousands are
alive among us to whom existence has brought only pain, and that fresh
thousands join this dumb throng of martyrs with every added year. If
they had l