“What is your idea of this work?” said Mr. Dinneford.  “In other words, what do you think the best practical way to purify this region?”

“If you draw burning brands and embers close together, your fire grows stronger; if you scatter them apart, it will go out,” answered the missionary.  “Moral and physical laws correspond to each other.  Crowd bad men and women together, and they corrupt and deprave each other.  Separate them, and you limit their evil power and make more possible for good the influence of better conditions.  Let me give you an instance:  A man and his wife who had lived in a wretched way in one of the poorest hovels in Briar street for two years, and who had become idle and intemperate, disappeared from among us about six months ago.  None of their neighbors knew or cared much what had become of them.  They had two children.  Last week, as I was passing the corner of a street in the south-western part of the city in which stood a row of small new houses, a neatly-dressed woman came out of a store with a basket in her hand.  I did not know her, but by the brightening look in her face I saw that she knew me.

“‘Mr. Paulding,’ she said, in a pleased way, holding out her hand; ‘you don’t know me,’ she added, seeing the doubt in my face.  ’I am Mrs.—.’

“‘Impossible!’ I could not help exclaiming.

“‘But it’s true, Mr. Paulding,’ she averred, a glow of pleasure on her countenance.  ‘We’ve turned over a new leaf.’

“‘So I should think from your appearance,’ I replied.  ’Where do you live?’

“‘In the third house from the corner,’ pointing to the neat row of small brick houses I have mentioned.  ’Come and look at our new home.  I want to tell you about it!’

“I was too much pleased to need a second invitation.

“‘I’ve got as clean steps as my neighbors,’ she said, with pride in her voice, ’and shades to my windows, and a bright door-knob.  It wasn’t so in Briar street.  One had no heart there.  Isn’t this nice?’

“And she glanced around the little parlor we had entered.

“It was nice, compared to the dirty and disorderly place they had called their home in Briar street.  The floor was covered with a new ingrain carpet.  There were a small table and six cane-seat chairs in the room, shades at the windows, two or three small pictures on the walls and some trifling ornaments on the mantel.  Everything was clean and the air of the room sweet.

“‘This is my little Emma,’ she said as a cleanly-dressed child came into the room; ‘You remember she was in the school.’

“I did remember her as a ragged, dirty-faced child, forlorn and neglected, like most of the children about here.  It was a wonderful transformation.

“‘And now,’ I said, ‘tell me how all this has come about.’

“‘Well, you see, Mr. Paulding,’ she answered, ’there was no use in John and me trying to be anything down there.  It was temptation on every hand, and we were weak and easily tempted.  There was nothing to make us look up or to feel any pride.  We lived like our neighbors, and you know what kind of a way that was.