210 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF AMERICA. 



of depravity, retreat. All there meet in that squalid 

 filthy room ; men, women, boys, and girls sleep promiscu- 

 ously in the same beds, as they may happen to get a 

 place in them ; if not, they stretch themselves under the 

 beds, or any place they can find room. A tub or pail is 

 placed in the centre of the room, to which all resort. The 

 stench is sickening, for the tub remains for days without 

 being emptied. There is heard the blaspheming of the 

 drunkard, and the diabolical language of depravity. 

 The keepers of cheap lodgings are invariably th^receivers 

 of stolen goods, and protectors of vice from pursuit of 

 police. It is in such places that virtue also has to seek 

 a refuge. And there the young are exposed to the 

 severest trials, suffering the direst want, hungry and 

 shivering, and without clothes, and no work to be obtained. 

 They hear stories related of the success in pickpocketing 

 and burglary, and all other methods devised by want and 

 dishonesty to obtain means of existence. They hear 

 every good quality jeered at. Death from starvation is 

 before their eyes. Yea, it has already commenced its 

 work, and they see themselves cadaverous, attenuated 

 shadows of what they had been, and without apparel. 

 Salvation of their existence is held out to them by for- 

 saking those religious principles in which they had been 

 brought up. There is no aid, no help, the charitable 

 declaimer against slavery spurns them with rudeness, yea, 

 I may say, with ruffian severity, that could come but from 

 canting hypocrisy. Thousands of thousands of these 

 poor creatures are left to perish. Rome, in its decline, 

 sold its children in the public market places. The poor of 

 London would sell their children and themselves, to 

 save themselves from death and from infamy, if they 



