OHAPTEK VII.

THE OPEN DOORS OF MERCY—THE SOCIETY POR THE PRE-
ATENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN" — BRUTES IN HUMAN
FORM —THE DEMON OF DRINK —RESCUE WORK.

"That is Mary Ellen" —The First Child Rescued — A Dying Woman's He-
quest—What the Court Saw when the Blanket was Unrolled —A Dramatic
Scene — Little Acrobats — Helpless Little Sufferers — Specious Pleas of
Criminal Lawyers — Inhuman Parents — A Lovely Face Hidden under
Filth and Clotted Blood — Extreme Cruelty — A Fit Subject for the Lash

— Restored to Home at Last — A Sad Case—"Before and After" — Two
Boy Tramps — Driven from Home — Cases of Special Brutality—Shiver¬
ing from Fright —Wild-Eyed Children — A Fresh Arrival at the Society's
Rooms—"Everything Must be Burned"—"He is Alive" — The First
Sleep in a Bed — A Life of Pain — A Drunken Mother of Seven Children

— Unspeakable Horrors — A Lily from a Dung-Heap — The Sale of Liquor
to Children—Children as Fierce as Starved Dogs — Terrible Instruments
of Torture — The Good Work of the Society.

THE brutal American is of the rarest. It is because New
York is less an American city than almost any other in
the United States that the need for the " Society for the Pre¬
vention of Cruelty to Chfldren " was so sore. As the foreign
element increased, and every form of ignorance with it, drunk¬
enness as well as natural brntaUty worked together. Women
no less than men were guilty of almost unspeakable crimes
toward helpless childhood, but no law then in existence allowed
of interference between parent and child. If screams resounded
through a tenement-house it was taken for granted that the
child deserved all it got and more; and if it were a case of
beating by drunken father or mother, the neighbors simply
counseled hiding, or, in extreme cases, running away.

So it went on till 1875. The frightful increase of brutality
to animals had resulted in the formation of the " Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," — a step which was

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