I stood to-night on the steps of the church and looked at a
ray of the setting sun that was slanting between buildings
and laying a finger of gold on the old dirty windows across
the street till they blazed into sudden glory. As I looked
the houses faded away, as they do in a moving picture, and
gradually melted into a great open space that stretched a
whole big block, all clear and green with thick velvety
grass. There were trees in the space--a lot of them--and
hammocks under some of them, with little children playing
about. At the farthest end there were tennis-courts and a
baseball diamond; and who do you think I saw teaching some
boys to pitch, but Pat! On the other side of the street a
big, old warehouse had been converted into a gymnasium with
a swimming-pool.
All around that block there were model tenements, with
thousands of windows; and light and air and cheerfulness.
There were flowers in little beds between the curbing and
the pavement, that the children could water and cultivate
and pick. There was a fountain of filtered water in the
center of the green, and a drinking-fountain at each corner
of the block, but there wasn't a saloon in sight!
I looked around to my right, and the old stone house with
its grimy face that belonged there had changed into a
beautiful home with vines and flowers. There were windows
everywhere jutting out with delightful unexpectedness, and
just lovely green grass and more trees all the way to the
corner! On the left, the old foundry had been cleansed and
transformed, and had become a hospital belonging to the
church. I couldn't help thinking right then and there what a
grand doctor Tennelly would have made if he only hadn't been
an aristocrat. The hospital was all white, and there was an
ambulance belonging to it, and nurses who worked not only
for money, but for the love of Christ. There wasn't a doctor
in it who didn't know what the Presence of God meant, or
couldn't point the way to be saved to a dying sinner.
Back of the church block, in place of the old shackly
factories, there was one great model factory with the best
modern equipment, and the eight-hour system in full swing.
No little children working for a scanty living! No tired
girls and women standing all day long! No foreman that did
not have a love for humanity in his soul and some kind of an
idea what it was to have the Presence of the living God in a
factory!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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