om house to
house, and the girls are in yet lower depths.
A STREET-CHILD. (FROM OUR JOURNAL.)
"Some ten years ago, I made many efforts to save a little homeless girl,
who was floating about the quarter near East Thirty-second Street. Her
drunken mother had thrown her out of doors, and she used to sleep under
stairways or in deserted cellars, and was a most wretched, half-starved
little creature. I talked with her often, but could not induce her to go
to school, or to seek a home in the country. She grew up steadily
vagrant. At length we succeeded in getting her away to the family of an
excellent lady in Buffalo. There she speedily gave up her roving habits,
became neat and orderly under the influence of the lady, attended church
and Sabbath School, and altogether seemed quite a changed child.
Unfortunately, the lady was obliged to move to this city, and instead of
placing the little girl in another family in the country, she brought
her with her to New York, and, no longer having room for her in her
house, let her go to her old associates. In a few weeks, the nice, tidy
little girl began to look like the idle and vagrant young girls who were
her companions. She became slatternly in her habits, and instead of
seeking a place in some family, she joined a company of poor
working-girls, who earned their living by manufacturing children's
torpedoes. She lodged in the crowded tenement-houses, and gradually fell
into all their low associations. The next I knew of her, I heard that
she had been seduced under a promise of marriage, and that she was about
to be a mother. Again I knew of her, with her unfortunate little babe,
driven about from one low lodging-house to another, dependent upon
charity for support. Finally, the child was adopted by the parents of
her seducer, and she was left free again. Though in extreme destitution,
she would not take a situation away from the city. She resumed her work
at torpedoes, and lived about in the tenement-houses, a poor,
bedraggled-looking creature. Again, after some time, I heard of her as
having married a low fellow in that district. She had only been married
a few days when her husband abandoned her, and never returned to her.
She now hangs about the low lodging-houses between First and Second
Avenues, in East Thirty-first and Thirty-second Streets, a
forlorn-looking, slovenly woman, who will almost certainly end in the
lowest vice and penury."
Thus far in the J
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