thinking.
The suffering in the tenements of the poor is as real, but even their
black cloud is not without its silver lining. It calls out among those
who have much as tender a charity as is ever alive among those who
have little or nothing and who know one another for brothers without
needing the reminder of a severe cold snap or a big storm to tell them
of it. More money was poured into the coffers of the charitable
societies in the last big cold snap than they could use for emergency
relief; and the reckless advertising in sensational newspapers of the
starvation that was said to be abroad called forth an emphatic protest
from representatives of the social settlements and of the Charity
Organization Society, who were in immediate touch with the poor. The
old question whether a heavy fall of snow does not more than make up
to the poor man the suffering it causes received a wide discussion at
the time, but in the end was left open as always. The simple truth is
that it brings its own relief to those who are always just on the
verge. It sets them to work, and the charity visitor sees the effect
in wages coming in, even if only for a brief season. The far greater
loss which it causes, and which the visitor does not see, is to those
who are regularly employed, and with whom she has therefore no
concern, in suspending all other kinds of outdoor work than
snow-shovelling.

Take it all together, and I do not believe even an unusual spell of
winter carries in its trail in New York such hopeless martyrdom to the
poor as in Old World cities, London for instance. There is something
in the clear skies and bracing air of our city that keeps the spirits
up to the successful defiance of anything short of actual hunger.
There abides with me from days and nights of poking about in dark
London alleys an impression of black and sooty rooms, and discouraged,
red-eyed women blowing ever upon smouldering fires, that is
disheartening beyond anything I ever encountered in the dreariest
tenements here. Outside, the streets lay buried in fog and slush that
brought no relief to the feelings.

Misery enough I have seen in New York's tenements; but deep as the
shadows are in the winter picture of it, it has no such darkness as
that. The newsboys and the sandwich-men warming themselves upon the
cellar gratings in Twenty-third Street and elsewhere have oftener than
not a ready joke to crack with the passer-by, or a little jig step to
relieve the