o lived in the notorious
village of shanties near Forty-second Street, known as 'Dutch Hill.' She
owned a small shanty, which had been put up on some rich man's lot as a
squatter's hut, and there, with her pigs and dogs and cat in the same
room, she made her home. From morning till evening she was trailing
about the streets, filling up her swill-cans, and at night she came back
to the little dirty den, and spent her evenings--we hardly know how. She
had one smart little girl who went to the Industrial School. As the
child came back day by day, improving in appearance, singing her sweet
songs, and with new ideas of how ladies looked and lived, the mother
began to grow ashamed of her nasty home. And I remember entering one
day, and finding, to my surprise, pigs and rubbish cleared out, the
walls well scrubbed, and an old carpet on the floor, and the mother
sitting in state on a chair! It was the quiet teachings of the school
coming forth in the houses of the poor.

"After a while the little girl began to get higher ideas of what she
might become, and went out with another girl to a place in the West. She
did well there, and was contented, but her mother was continually
anxious and unhappy about her, and finally, after some years, forced her
to return to the city. She was now a very neat, active young girl, far
above her mother's condition, and the change back to the pig-shanty and
Dutch Hill was anything but pleasant. The old woman hid away her best
clothes to prevent her going back, and seemed determined to make her a
swill-gatherer like herself. Gradually, as might be expected, we began
to hear bad stories about our old scholar. The people of the
neighborhood said, she drank and quarreled with her mother, and that she
was frequenting houses where low company met. Another of the worst Dutch
Hill girls--the daughter of a drunkard--was constantly with her. Soon we
heard that the other young girl had been sent to Blackwell's Island, and
that this one must be saved now, or she would be utterly lost. I went up
at once to the old woman's shanty, though with but the feeblest hopes of
doing anything, yet with many unuttered prayers. For who that knows the
career before the street-girl of the city can help breathing out his
soul in agony of prayer for her, when the time of choice comes?

"When I entered the shanty, the young girl was asleep on the bed, and
the mother sat on a box, crooning and weeping.

"'Och, and why did I ive