larger amount of Christian charity to a poor fellow creature, one that
may offer him some small portion of that encouragement which is so
essential to his reformation. Some such epigram as 'it is never too
late to mend' would be altogether more suitable and far more
encouraging.


THE HOUSE OF REFUGE.

The Commissioners of Public Charities and Correction, in their last
report, made the startling announcement that there are no less than
thirty-nine thousand children in the City of New York, growing up in
ignorance and idleness. These children, influenced from their cradles
by the most terrible surroundings, have no alternative but to become
beggars and thieves almost as soon as they can run alone. Thousands of
them are orphans, or perhaps worse, for they are often the children of
parents who, ignoring the laws of nature, use them for the purpose of
furthering their own vicious ends. They live principally in a
neighborhood which abounds in lodging-houses for sailors, the lowest
class of liquor stores, dancing and concert rooms, and various other
low places of amusement; a neighborhood swarming with brothels, whose
wretched inmates are permitted to flaunt their sin and finery, and ply
their hateful trade openly, by day and night; where at midnight the
quarrels, fights, and disturbances, are so noisy and so frequent that
none can hope for a night's rest until they are inured by habit; where,
night after night, they witness the most desperate encounters between
drunken men and women, kicking, biting, and tearing one another's hair
out, as they roll together in the gutter, or, as is too often the case,
using deadly weapons, and where the crowd, instead of interfering to
stop these awful scenes, stand by in a brutal enjoyment of them,