Through this great human funnel, the Bowery (and it is not the only one in New York through which pours the sin, the shame, the disease and the disgrace of this great city), I wandered on. Seeing a crowd gathered on the pavement in one place, I stopped and saw lying prone upon her face, a wretched creature whose skirt had fallen from her body. She lay there nude, defenseless, uncovered to the view of the morbid throng. The unfortunate, though helpless, was conscious of her shame, and was making futile efforts to hide her disgrace. Just then there happened along a good Samaritan, who, stepping through the crowd, took from his shoulders a blue cotton jumper and covered this wreck of womanhood. Turning to the gaping bystanders, he angrily heaped upon them so scathing a rebuke that with flushed faces and hanging heads they stole away. He asked of some women who stood near by if they would shield the woman until the arrival of an ambulance. One of them kindly consented to do so. I turned away sick at heart for I knew the pathetic finish, that the only open door New York held for this unfortunate one was a prison door.
As I went along, I saw again Old Trinity with its stained glass windows, its old burying ground, worth millions, where the dead have rested for two hundred years, and I thought: "After all, it was the Bowery that revealed to me to-day '_the golden rule of Christ_,' which alone can bring '_the golden rule of man_.'"
With the vanishing of the sunshine and shadows which all day long had been playing in and about Union Square--whose bits of green lawn, sparkling fountains, and many settees welcome the weary and heavy laden, for a little time at least, and invite rest,--came the myriad lights of the great city which follow the active day of toil and care. At evening I found myself resting there. I had taken a seat beside a white-haired, soft-spoken, slightly-bent man, clothed in a discolored suit, badly worn shoes and tattered hat,--a man who seemingly had received all the blows and hardships our tough old world can give. Indifferently I drew him casually into conversation. The information I gained was taken out of the crucible of a pathetic life, and it revealed a story which may be summed up in a few words: Youth, hope, health, success, love, happiness, reverses, crosses, trials, temptations, error, ruin, impaired health, old age, discouragement,--no, not entirely. He still had left a spark of courage. _He still believed in himself._ He spoke of the detriment of his physical weakness, caused by a State institution (I knew it was a prison) into which he was forced; of the prejudice against the man a little beyond middle life who was looking for work; of the past that stood as a barrier between him and an ability to re-establish himself in society. Yet he hopefully added, "I have a job now at seven dollars a week and my board. I shall be able to get the decent clothes so essential in finding better work, with better pay." When he realized that I was apparently in a worse position than himself, for I seemed both workless and penniless, we talked of our mutual vicissitudes. He referred me to the Municipal Lodging House of New York, declaring he had found it both a refuge and a salvation at a time when it almost seemed to him that life meant utter abandonment, even to self-destruction.