One of the most striking improvements that I have witnessed has been in the sanitary condition, both physical and moral, of our great cities. The conditions in New York, when I came to the pastorate of the Market Street Church almost fifty years ago, would seem incredible to the New Yorkers of to-day. The disgusting depravities of the Fourth Ward, afterwards made familiar by the reformatory efforts of Jerry McCauley, were then in full blast, defying all police authority and outraging common decency. The most hideous sink of iniquity and loathsome degradation was in the once famous "Five Points," in the heart of the Sixth Ward and within a pistol shot of Broadway. At the time of my coming to New York public attention had been drawn to that quarter with the opening of the "Old Brewery Mission," and by the first planting of a kindred enterprise which grew into the now well-known "Five Points House of Industry." The brave projector of this enterprise was the Rev. L.M. Pease, a hero whose name ought not to be forgotten. As my church was just off East Broadway, and within a short walk of the Five Points, I took a deep interest in Mr. Pease's Christian undertaking, and aided him by every means in my power. His wife became a member of my church. The "Wild Maggie," whose escapades described in the _Tribune_ gained such public notoriety, became also, after her reformation, one of our church members and afterwards held the position of a school teacher. After the resignation of Mr. Pease and his removal to North Carolina, his place was taken by one of our Market Street elders, the devout and godly minded Benjamin R. Barlow. In order to keep awake public interest in the mission work at the Five Points, and to get ammunition, in its behalf, I used to make nocturnal explorations of some of those satanic quarters. I recall now one of those midnight forays of which, at the risk of my reader's olfactories, I will give a brief glimpse. In company with the superintendent of the mission and a policeman and a lad with a lantern I struck for the "Cow Bay," the classic spot of which Charles Dickens had given such a piquant description in his "American Notes" a few years before. Climbing a stairway, from which the banisters had long been broken away for firewood, we entered a dark room. There was only a tallow candle burning in the corner, and in the room were huddled twenty-five human beings. Along the walls were ranged the bunks--one above the other--covered with rotting quilts and unwashed coverings. Each of these rented for sixpence a night to any thief or beggar who chose to apply for lodging--no distinction being made for sex or color. As the lad swings the lantern about we spy the rows of heads projecting from under the stacks of rags. In one bed a gray-haired, disheveled head cuddled close to the yellow locks of a slumbering child. While we are reconnoitering, something like a huge dog runs past and dives under the bed. "What is this, good friend?" we ask.