rt-sick and prostrate with disease, seeks to keep warm his
three ragged children, nestling about him. An homeless outcast,
necessity forces him to send them out to prey upon the community by day,
and to seek in this wretched hovel a shelter at night. Yonder the rags
are thrown back, a moving mass is disclosed, and there protrudes a
disfigured face, made ghostly by the shadow of the detective's lantern.
At the detective's feet a prostrate girl, insensible of gin, is seized
with convulsions, clutches with wasted hands at the few rags about her
poor, flabby body, then with fingers grasping, and teeth firmly set, her
whole frame writhes in agony. Your missionary never whispered a kind,
encouraging word in her ear; his hand never pressed that blanched bone
with which she now saddens your heart! Different might it have been with
her had some gentle-tongued Brother Spyke sought her out, bore patiently
with her waywardness, snatched her from this life of shame, and placed
her high in an atmosphere of light and love.

It is here, gentle shepherds, the benighted stand most in need of your
labors. Seek not to evangelize the Mahomedan world until you have worked
a reform here; and when you have done it, a monument in heaven will be
your reward.

"Mr. Toddleworth is not here," says the detective, withdrawing into the
passage, then ascending a broken and steep stairs that lead into the
third story. Nine shivering forms crouched in one dismal room; four
squabbish women, and three besotted men in another; and in a third, nine
ragged boys and two small girls--such are the scenes of squalid misery
presented here. In a little front room, Mr. Tom Downey, his wife, and
eight children, lay together upon the floor, half covered with rags. Mr.
Downey startles at the appearance of the detective, rises nervously from
his pallet, and after the pause of a moment, says: "Indeed, yer welcome,
Mr. Fitzgerald. Indeed, I have not--an' God knows it's the truth I
tell--seen Mr. Toddleworth the week;" he replies, in answer to a
question from the detective.

"You took a drop with him this afternoon?" continues the detective,
observing his nervousness.

"God knows it's a mistake, Mr. Fitzgerald." Mr. Downey changes the
subject, by saying the foreigners in the garret are a great nuisance,
and disturb him of his rest at night.

A small, crooked stair leads into "Organ-grinders' Roost," in the
garret. To "Organ-grinders' Roost" the detective ascends. If,