the men who give nothing to foreign missions give nothing to home missions.

The police were noticeably absent from Water Street. Abandoned women are allowed to stand in the doors to solicit and invite the innocent into their dens. Vice flourishes in the Fourth Precinct with the most brazen-faced audacity, either through police complicity or police stupidity.

The houses in Water Street are not fit for habitation. No conveniences, bad ventilation, filthy sewers and unclean alleys; whole families occupy one room, eat, drink, cook and sleep in a room ten feet by ten. I have found instances of from ten to seventeen people huddled together in one or two rooms, the whole space not being more than ten by twenty feet. A dozen odors rush into your nostrils at the same time, and each one distinct from the other. The way they cook in the slums is a study. They do not know what it is to taste a good meal. Weary with toil, they crave for something to eat and drink. They drink because they have not enough to eat, or because what they eat does not satisfy.

It seems to me that what is needed very much is a mission to teach them how to look well to the ways of the household. It is not theology they want so much as some knowl

edge in the sciences of bake-ology, boil-ology, cook-ology, stitch-ology, and mend-ology.

To work successfully in the slums a great deal of sanctified common sense is needed. A missionary in Water Street told me that not long ago a minister came to her and told her that, walking down Water Street, he was invited to enter the abode of one of these demons of darkness. He went in and began to talk of home, holiness, and heaven. The girl burst into tears. He thought his words were doing the good intended, and that he might have a better chance to speak and pray with her he hired a room, paying a dollar for it, that he might unmolested show her the way of life. This man was good, but he was green. He had learning, but it was of a kind that makes its possessors so magnificently ridiculous that the simplest plowman could perceive his shortness of wit. He is as much out of place in the pulpit as if a salmon should climb a tree.

In the evening I visited the old McAuley Mission. I heard the testimony of drunkards redeemed, some of long and others of recent experience. Many bore the marks of having not yet had time to get good clothes and to wear off the effects of the distilled damnation which had well-nigh destroyed them. These

men did not parade their sins in their testimonies, but praised God. They impressed me with the fact that their godliness was not only from the lips outward. It was not the noisy zeal that sought the praise of man. "A handful of holy life is worth a ton of tall talk."

XII.

PALM-TREE CHRISTIANS.

"The righteous shall flourish like a palm-tree.”—David.

THE palm branches shoot upward, and there are none that grow out of the side as in other trees; so the Christian seeks the things above, where Christ dwells. Rearing its stem and diffusing its shade as a shelter over the exhausted traveler, how beautifully does this tree exemplify the Christian who becomes a shade to the friendless, the destitute, and the afflicted. Like the palm, the Christian must become a shade to others.

The palm-tree yields abundant fruit. "The dates hung from these trees," says a learned traveler, "in such large and tempting clusters that we climbed to the tops of some of them and carried away with us large branches with their fruit. Wherever the date-tree is found in these dreary deserts, it not only presents a supply of salutary food for men and camels, but nature has so wonderfully contrived the

plant that its first offering is accessible to man alone, and the mere circumstance of its presence in all seasons of the year is a never-failing indication of fresh water near its roots. A considerable part of the inhabitants of Europe, Arabia, and Persia subsist almost entirely upon its fruit. They boast also of its medicinal virtues. Their camels feed upon the date-stones; from the leaves and branches are made an astonishing variety of domestic furniture and utensils; from the fibers of the boughs are manufactured thread, ropes and rigging; the body of the tree furnishes fuel; and from one variety of the tree meal has been extracted and has been used for food." Are not thus the righteous pictured forth by this tree? Eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, feet to the lame, clothes to the naked, food to the hungry-they are known, like the secret wells of the desert, by the living verdure about them; like the palm, whose "presence is a never-failing indication of fresh water near its roots," their presence is felt by the happiness they produce, the good seeds they sow, and the atmosphere of light and holiness which diffuse a grateful fragrance through all with whom they come in contact.

The palm-tree grows in the purest soil; it will not grow in filthy places. The righteous