in great distress, had no food in the
house, for Henry has hip disease, and for eleven weeks has not walked
a step. On every side I could look through the open boards, and when
the last storms came, they said the rain came down on the whole floor,
covering it, so they sat on the pallet all day. The landlord has
ordered them _to leave the house_ in five days, _to put in a cow_
instead! Friendless, homeless, penniless!!! and yet _must_ eat or die.
Three of those I saw were over one hundred--one had five children,
when Washington died, lived in his county. Sixteen were over seventy.
Not one of them had a child in this city. Five were over 80; and all
of these whom I saw were as dependent as infants.

Johnny Scraper sat in rags, paralyzed from the top of his head to the
soles of his feet, alone in a six-by-ten-foot room, unable to walk a
step, yet is left entirely alone, sometimes for three days. If he has
anything brought in to eat, he thanks God; if not, he must do without
it. Tuesday and Saturday night he says a fellow-servant, living in a
distant part of the city, came to see him, and sometimes brought a
piece of fish or meat; this is all the chance he has for anything,
except a little meal or dry bread. Every one of these old people
complained that they were _dying_ for some meat--were so weak. Aunt
Dinah said that she went out on the street last week and begged of the
school children, who gave her seven cents, and she went into a grocery
to buy a piece of meat, and received there five cents more. "Oh!"
said she, "how that strengthened me, it lasted me _three days_."

I might go on and fill the sheet with incidents of these extremely
aged pilgrims and strangers in this city, for whom nobody cares. But I
should fail to convey to you any just idea of what they suffer,
because you can see there is no parallel to their status. In no city
on the globe can you find a people to whom the words of Wood (I think
it is) so well apply--"_paupers_ whom nobody owns." You must see them
_as they are to believe_.

The Government says, "They _need provisions_, let the _city_ be
taxed." The city says, "We care for the multitude of legitimate
paupers of the Government--pensioners, who die waiting for their
claims, _but these are special wards_, brought to the capital by
special legislation, not any of them voluntary residents. We are
unable to provide for this surplus of poor." Turning to the people of
the country, they say, "We have g