e, and wan, wrinkled hands
folded in her lap. The singing ceased as we stepped across the
threshold.

"Be welcome," piped a harsh voice with a singular note of cheerfulness
in it. "Whose step is that with you, pastor? I don't know it. He is
welcome in Jennie's house, whoever he be. Girls, make him to home."
The girls moved up to make room.

"Jennie has not seen since she was a child," said the clergyman,
gently; "but she knows a friend without it. Some day she shall see the
great Friend in his glory, and then she shall be Blind Jennie no
more."

The little woman raised the veil from a face shockingly disfigured,
and touched the eyeless sockets. "Some day," she repeated, "Jennie
shall see. Not long now--not long!" Her pastor patted her hand. The
silence of the dark room was broken by Blind Jennie's voice, rising
cracked and quavering: "Alas! and did my Saviour bleed?" The shrill
chorus burst in:--

It was there by faith I received my sight,
And now I am happy all the day.

The light that falls from the windows of the Neighborhood Guild, in
Delancey Street, makes a white path across the asphalt pavement.
Within, there is mirth and laughter. The Tenth Ward Social Reform Club
is having its Christmas festival. Its members, poor mothers,
scrubwomen,--the president is the janitress of a tenement near
by,--have brought their little ones, a few their husbands, to share in
the fun. One little girl has to be dragged up to the grab-bag. She
cries at the sight of Santa Claus. The baby has drawn a woolly horse.
He kisses the toy with a look of ecstatic bliss, and toddles away. At
the far end of the hall a game of blindman's-buff is starting up. The
aged grandmother, who has watched it with growing excitement, bids one
of the settlement workers hold her grandchild, that she may join in;
and she does join in, with all the pent-up hunger of fifty joyless
years. The worker, looking on, smiles; one has been reached. Thus is
the battle against the slum waged and won with the child's play.

Tramp! tramp! comes the to-morrow upon the stage. Two hundred and
fifty pairs of little feet, keeping step, are marching to dinner in
the Newsboys' Lodging-house. Five hundred pairs more are restlessly
awaiting their turn upstairs. In prison, hospital, and almshouse
to-night the city is host, and gives of her plenty. Here an unknown
friend has spread a generous repast for the waifs who all the rest of
the days shift for themselves as be