Toronto by Gaslight: The Night Hawks of a Great City: As Seen by the Reporters of "The Toronto News"Toronto News
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Toronto by Gaslight: The Night Hawks of a Great City: As Seen by the Reporters of "The Toronto News"
Toronto News
Toronto (Ont.) -- Description and travel
of both sexes, some of them younger and apparently less hardened than the
rest; all had been drinking heavily, but they received the clergyman with
high good humor, which they carried so far as to interrupt Mr. ⸺ when
he began the funeral service with groans, sighs, and remarks which were
judged appropriate. Thus the versicle, “Man that is born of a woman is
full of trouble.” Mr. ⸺ was interrupted by remarks such as, “Thrue for
yer riverence, and its meself knows it!” “His riverence is right, and
may the hivens be his bed.” All went tolerably well till Mr. ⸺ proposed
to offer a prayer, and requested all present to kneel. Now all the
assistants at this strange funeral were sufficiently sober to keep their
feet, and had the Presbyterian ritual been observed, all would have gone
well. The men managed to kneel—but the women, once they tried to kneel,
lost the center of gravity and toppled over on the floor, whereon when
Mr. ⸺ left the place, they were sprawling in the vain effort to rise!
The clergyman whose opinions I am now quoting was convinced that in
slum-life there are many cases of guiltless, undeserved poverty, not due
to drink nor to vice, but to other causes. As an instance of this, he
told me that he had been informed that a poor, hardworking widow and her
three little girls, living in a room in a tenement house on ⸺ street,
were in a state of destitution. He proceeded thither at once. In a bare,
unfurnished room, without a spark of fire, though it was February of a
severe winter, were three little girls, each covered by a single ragged
cotton garment. Their father was in a drunkard’s grave; their mother, a
frail, weak woman, was out of work. She could not earn enough to pay her
weekly rent for that poor place and provide a loaf of bread daily for her
children. It lay on the table ready for them to help themselves, but the
poor little things had but little appetite. The youngest was five years
old, the eldest seven. They lay in bed all day under the shelter of a
single coverlet, for they had
NO CLOTHES, NO SHOES, THAT WINTER DAY.
The kind-hearted clergyman at once gave good food and fuel. Grateful
warmth and nourishment followed in his wake, the little girls revived,
and in the words of the Book, whose lessons his life is devoted to carry
out, “The widow’s heart was made to sing for joy.”
A CHARLTON BILL CASE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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