ands and the axe handle, and I took him by the neck
and ran him to the other end of the yard and dumped him in a corner.
Any kind of a fuss in that yard had usually a very serious ending; but
this had not, for the yard superintendent took my part.

I think it was about eleven o'clock in the forenoon when I finished my
wood, and went in to get breakfast, which consisted of a bowl of gruel
and two hard biscuits. One of these biscuits I kept hanging in my
study for two years. After breakfast I marched into the office, and
said to the superintendent:

"Brother, I want to ask you a few questions which belong to a
domain--that mysterious domain that lies between the facts and your
'Annual Report.'"

"Are you a reporter?" was his first question.

Assuring him that I was not, I asked him the necessary questions, and,
furnished with some real information, I returned to the Wall Street
Conference.

I think John H. Finley of the City College was the representative, and
he rendered his report. Then I stood up and told of my experience
which differed vitally from the re-hash of the "Annual Report." The
facts, as I found them, were all in favour of such an institution. A
man would have to be mighty hard up to go to the Boston municipal
lodging house; and that is exactly what was needed. The necessity for
padding the "Annual Report" I could never find out.

The municipal lodging house agitated at that time is now a fact. It
has been duplicated. On February 19th, 1893, in the Church of the
Covenant on Park Avenue, I made the suggestion, and it was published
in the papers the following day, that there was a splendid
opportunity for a philanthropist to invest a few million dollars at
five per cent. in a few lodging houses on a gigantic scale. What
connection the Mills Hotels bear to that suggestion, I do not know,
but they are the exact fulfilment of it.

* * * * *

A few years in that work gave me a terrific feeling of hopelessness,
and I longed for some other form of church work where I could obviate
some of the work of the Bowery. The best a man could do on the Bowery
was to save a few old stranded wrecks; but the work among children
appealed to me now with far greater force. I also saw the necessity of
the preacher touching not only the spiritual side of a man, but the
material side also. A preacher's function, as I understood it after
these experiences, was to touch the whole round sphere of