a fine sound; it is more refined than "wages," though it was less than
my pay as a milkman. After working a month, I had the temerity to
outline a plan for a dictionary which would necessitate the most
profound scholarship in America. This plan was laughed at, at first,
but finally adopted, and it took seven years and millions of dollars,
and hundreds of the best scholars in the United States and foreign
countries to complete the work. They raised my salary from $10 a week
to $100 a month; but when an opening came to work as a missionary
among the Bowery lodging houses at $60 a month, I considered it the
opportunity of a lifetime, and in 1890 entered my new parish--the
Bowery.




CHAPTER VII

FISHING FOR MEN ON THE BOWERY


The Bowery is one of the most unique thoroughfares of the world. The
history of the cheap lodging houses, to which I was commissioned to
carry the gospel, is one of the most interesting phases of the
Bowery's history. Ex-inspector Thomas Byrnes has described the lodging
house of the Bowery as "a breeding place of crime." He probably did
not know that the cheap lodging house had its origin in a
philanthropic effort. It was in 1872, somewhere on the edge of a
financial panic, that the first lodging house of this type was
organized by two missionaries--Rev. Dr. A.F. Shauffler and the Rev.
John Dooley. The Young Men's Christian Association of the Bowery found