and losing land and house at once. Usually they
remain while the quarrymen who are opening streets almost undermine
their shanties, and then if the buildings are not blown away, they pull
them down and pack them away like tents to another dwelling-place.

The village is filled with snarling dogs, which aid in drawing the swill
or coal carts, for the children are mainly employed in collecting swill
and picking coals through the streets.

The shanty family are never quite so poor as the tenement-house family;
as they have no rent to pay. But the filth and wretchedness in which
they sometimes live are beyond description.

It happened that for many years (not wishing to scatter my efforts too
much), I made this quarter my special "parish" for visitations; and very
discouraging visits they were, many of them. The people had very little
regular occupation, many being widows who did occasional "chores" in
families; others lived on the sale of the coal their children gathered,
or on the pigs which shared their domicile; others kept fowls, and all
had vast flocks of goats, though where the profits from these latter
came I could never discover, as no one seemed to buy the milk, and I
never heard of their killing them. Money, however, in some way they did
procure, and one old red-faced swill-gatherer I knew well, whose bright
child we tried so long to save, who died finally, it was said, with a
large deposit in the Savings-Bank, which no one could claim; yet one
corner of her bed-chamber was filled with a heap of smelling bones, and
the pigs slept under her bed.

Another old rag-picker I remember whose shanty was a sight to behold;
all the odds and ends of a great, city seemed piled up in it,--bones,
broken dishes, rags, bits of furniture, cinders, old tin, useless lamps,
decaying vegetables, ribbons, cloths, legless chairs, and carrion, all
mixed together, and heaped up nearly to the ceiling, leaving hardly room
for a bed on the floor where the woman and her two children slept. Yet
all these were marvels of health and vigor, far surpassing most children
I know in the comfortable classes. The woman was German, and after years
of effort could never be induced to do anything for the education of her
children, until finally I put the police on their track as vagrants, and
they were safely housed in the "Juvenile Asylum."

Many a time have I come into their shanties on a snowy morning and found
the people asleep with the snow lyi