It seems to me that of all the charities in our great city, none is more deserving of the attention of the benevolent, than that which takes the little children of our poor, from the moral and physical filth of their wretched surroundings, and places them in healthy, pure homes in the country. No one, who has ever had heart and courage to penetrate the terrible lanes, alleys and by-ways of poverty and crime in New York, but asks himself with a shudder, as he looks at the little ones there, what sort of men and women will these children be? How far will He who counteth the fall of the sparrow, hold _them_ responsible for the dreadful teachings of their infancy? Infancy? the word is a mockery. They have none. To feign--to cheat--to steal--this is their alphabet. As to the fathers and mothers, who fold their lazy hands and sit down in these pestiferous places to await the "penny" pittances their children may collect, or their little pilferings which may be turned into "pennies," the sooner the doors of our jails and penitentiaries close on _them_ the better. _Their_ case is hopeless; since sin has reached its climax when it deliberately and systematically debauches childhood. But the little ones? _They_ might be saved. They _are_ being saved; that's a comfort to know. Daily they are being collected, by good men who make it their chief occupation to wash, feed, clothe and transplant these sickly shoots of poverty, into the fair garden of the West. Many a farmer's family there has a rosy face by its hearth, which you would never recognize to be the squalid little creature, whose shivering palm was extended to you at midnight, as you returned home from some place of amusement in the city. There it is being taught useful and _happy_ labor. There is pure air--sweet food, and enough of it. Good company and good books. _There_ are Sundays. Blessed be Sundays! for injudiciously as they are sometimes observed even by good people, be sure that sweet old hymn will go singing through the future life of these children, like a golden thread, gleaming out from the dark woof of care and trouble:
"Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee; E'en though it be a cross That raiseth me, Still all my song shall be, Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee."