So it was arranged that they were to come up to the office next day, and then get a home in the country. The little girl now wrapped her thin shawl about her head, and ran along before us, through the storm, to some of the other children. The harder it snowed, the more the little eyes sparkled and the prettier she looked. "Another home of poverty--dark, damp, and chill. The mother an Englishwoman; her child had gone to the school barefooted. This girl was engaged in the same business--selling fruit at night in the brothels. 'I know it, sir,' she said; 'she ought to have as good a chance as other people's children. But I'm so poor! I haven't paid a month's rent, and I was sick three weeks.' "'Yes, you're right. I know the city, sir; and I would rather have her in her grave than brought down to those cellars. But what can I do, sir?' "We arrange, again, to find a situation in the country, if she wishes--and engage her, at least, to keep the child at school. "Our little sprite flies along again through the snow, and shows us another home of one of our scholars--a prostitute's cellar. The elder sister of the child is there, and meets us pleasantly, though with a shame-faced look. 'Yes, she shall go to school every day, sir. We never sent her before, nowheres; but she's learnin' very fast there now.' "We tell her the general objects of the school, and of the good, kind home which can be found for her sister in the country. She seems glad and her face, which must have been pretty once, lights up, perhaps, at the thought for her sister, of what she shall never more have--a pure home. Two or three sailors, sitting at their bottles, say, 'Yes, that's it! git the little gal out of this! it ain't no place for her.' "They are all respectful, and seem to understand what we are doing. "The little guide has gone back, and we go now to another address--a back cellar in Oak Street--damp, dark, so that one at mid-day could hardly see to read; filthy, chilly, yet with six or eight people living there. Every one has a cold; and the oldest daughter, a nice girl of fourteen, is losing her eyes in the foul atmosphere. The old story: 'No work, no friends, rent to pay, and nothing to do.' The parents squalid, idle, intemperate, and shiftless. There they live, just picking up enough to keep life warm in them; groaning, and begging, and seeking work. There they live, breeding each day pestilence and disease, scattering abroad over the city seeds of fearful sickness--raising a brood of vagrants and harlots--retorting on society its neglect by cursing the bodies and souls of thousands whom they never knew, and who never saw them.