“Nor does one in a hundred of our good citizens, who live in quiet unconcern with this pest-house of crime and disease in their midst.  And speaking of disease, let me give you another fact that should be widely known.  Every obnoxious epidemic with which our city has been visited in the last twenty years has originated here—­ship fever, relapsing fever and small-pox—­and so, getting a lodgment in the body politic, have poured their malignant poisons into the blood and diseased the whole.  Death has found his way into the homes of hundreds of our best citizens through the door opened for him here.”

“Can this be so?” exclaimed Mr. Dinneford.

“It is just as I have said,” was replied.  “And how could it be otherwise?  Whether men take heed or not, the evil they permit to lie at their doors will surely do them harm.  Ignorance of a statute, a moral or a physical law gives no immunity from consequence if the law be transgressed—­a fact that thousands learn every year to their sorrow.  There are those who would call this spread of disease, originating here, all over our city, a judgment from God, to punish the people for that neglect and indifference which has left such a hell as this in their midst.  I do not so read it.  God has no pleasure in punishments and retributions.  The evil comes not from him.  It enters through the door we have left open, just as a thief enters our dwellings, invited through our neglect to make the fastenings sure.  It comes under the operations of a law as unvarying as any law in physics.  And so long as we have this epidemic-breeding district in the very heart of our city, we must expect to reap our periodical harvests of disease and death.  What it is to be next year, or the next, none can tell.”

“Does not your perpetual contact with all this give your mind an unhealthy tone—­a disposition to magnify its disastrous consequences?” said Mr. Dinneford.

The missionary dropped his eyes.  The flush and animation went out of his face.

“I leave you to judge for yourself,” he answered, after a brief silence, and in a voice that betrayed a feeling of disappointment.  “You have the fact before you in the board of health, prison, almshouse, police, house of refuge, mission and other reports that are made every year to the people.  If they hear not these, neither will they believe, though one rose from the dead.”

“All is too dreadfully palpable for unbelief,” returned Mr. Dinneford.  “I only expressed a passing thought.”

“My mind may take an unhealthy tone—­does often, without doubt,” said Mr. Paulding.  “I wonder, sometimes, that I can keep my head clear and my purposes steady amid all this moral and physical disorder and suffering.  But exaggeration of either this evil or its consequences is impossible.  The half can never be told.”

Mr. Dinneford rose to go.  As he did so, two little Italian children, a boy and a girl, not over eight years of age, tired, hungry, pinched and starved-looking little creatures, the boy with a harp slung over his shoulder, and the girl carrying a violin, went past on the other side.