t, like the rats, they
were too quick and cunning to be often caught in their petty
plunderings, so they gnawed away at the foundations of society
undisturbed. As to the "popular education" of which we boast, and the
elevating and inspiring faith of Christianity which had reared its
temples all around them, they might almost as well have been the
children of the Makololos in Central Africa. They had never been in
school or church, and knew of God and Christ only in street-oaths, or as
something of which people far above them spoke sometimes.

I determined to inaugurate here a regular series of the "moral
disinfectants," if I may so call them, for this "crime-nest," which act
almost as surely, though not as rapidly, as do the physical
disinfectants--the sulphate of iron, the chloride of lime, and the
various deodorizers of the Board of Health--in breaking up the
"fever-nests" of the city.

These measures, though imitated in some respects from England, were
novel in their combination.

The first step in the treatment is to appoint a kind-hearted agent or
"Visitor," who shall go around the infected quarter, and win the
confidence of, and otherwise befriend the homeless and needy children of
the neighborhood. Then we open an informal, simple, religious
meeting--the Boys' Meeting which I have described; next we add to it a
free Reading-room, then an Industrial School, afterwards a
Lodging-house; and, after months or years of the patient application of
these remedies, our final and most successful treatment is, as I have
often said, the forwarding of the more hopeful cases to farms in the
West.

While seeking to apply these long-tried remedies to the wretched young
population in the Sixteenth Ward, I chanced on a most earnest Christian
man, a resident of the quarter, whose name I take the liberty of
mentioning--Mr. D. Slater, a manufacturer.

He went around himself through the rookeries of the district, and
gathered the poor lads even in his own parlor; he fed and clothed them;
he advised and prayed with them. We opened together a religious meeting
for them. Nothing could exceed their wild and rowdy conduct in the first
gatherings. On one or two occasions some of the little ruffians
absolutely drew knives on our assistants, and had to be handed over to
the police. But our usual experience was repeated even there. Week by
week patient kindness and the truths of Christianity began to have their
effect on these wild littl