Would you know how thin this crust actually is; how fissured and honey-combed from beneath, until it can scarce sustain its own weight, and the sulphur fumes ever rise through it like steam through a sieve, inspect the city government and note how and what constitutes the controlling power. When you learn, as you will if you examine carefully, that those thousands of vile drinking dens dictate who shall be our public servants, and what laws we shall live under; that the "madam" of the fashionable bagnio is more potent at police headquarters than any delegation of the Y.M.C.A.; that no whereas or resolution of philanthropists can withstand the fiat of the ward bosses; that everywhere there is collusion with criminals and jobbery, perhaps you will not be quite so certain of "the world's great future." . . . Do you turn to the church to make good the promise of the optimist? Let us explore the "amen corner" and see how many pious souls we shall there find whose incomes are chiefly drawn from buildings rented for immoral purposes. Even while I write I see an old white-haired man, whose power in prayer is the pride of his church, making his rounds, collecting his monthly stipend from the keepers of negro brothels and the lowest grade of drinking dens,--places where nightly assemble people of all ages, colors and sexes and enact scenes that might bring a blush to even the brazen front of Belial! The church? What is it doing to extinguish the well-nigh shoreless Gehenna that threatens to engulf it? Drilling an augur-hole here and there in the thin crust and pouring in a few drops of water,--or oil, as the case may be; founding a few missions; distributing a little dole; sending a few Bibles to the heathen to offset the much bad whisky supplied them by "Christian countries"; perfecting its choir and sending its pastor to the Orient to hunt for "confirmation of Holy Scripture "amid the mummified cats of Egypt or the hoary trash of Palestine!