The million-peopled city
Garwood, John
1853
Refuges.
"But we must mark another step in this progress, for another want is felt and is supplied. Warmth and com- panionship are often the first attractions which bring the lonely vagrant to our . There is kindness, instruction, and employment for him, but as yet no home, and oh, how hard it seems to turn him out into the streets! | |
" Refuges then constitute the next feature, and money is the great necessity for these. Our rate-payers grudgingly disburse in our poor-houses ten times the sum which would, if cheerfully and wisely expended, provide asylums of Christian kindness for all our homeless little ones. The | |
63 | country lavishes upon prisons enough to lodge and teach and feed our whole criminal population, and to send them moreover to a land of plenty, calling for their labour. . . In most of these refuges deserving children are rescued wholly from their bad companions, and the dens of their usual habitation, the arches, doorways, and carts in which they sleep. Books might be written of the histories of these inmates of our refuges, and they disclose to the man of thought a whole world of adventure and wickedness !" . |