CHAPTER X.

NIGHT MISSION WORK —NEW YORK STREETS AFTER DARK —
RESCUE WORK AMONG THE FALLEN AND DEPRAVED —
SEARCHING FOR THE LOST—AN ALL-NIGHT MISSIONARY'S
EXPERIENCE.

The "Bloody Sixth Ward" —Hoodlums — The Florence Night Mission —
Where the Inmates Come from—A Refuge for Fallen Women —
Searching for Lost Daughters — Low Concert Halls — Country Boys
Who " Come in Just to See" — A Brand Plucked from the Burning —
Old Rosa's Den of Villainy — In the Midst of Vice and Degradation —
Rescue Work Among the Fallen — Accordeon Mary — "Sing! Sing !"

— Gospel Service in a Stale-Beer Dive — The Fruits of One False Step

— Scenes in Low Dance-Halls and Vile Resorts — Painted Wrecks — An
All-Night Missionary's Experience — Saving a Despised Magdalen — A
Perilous Moment — The Story of Nellie Conroy — Rescued from the
Lowest Depths of Sin — Nine Years in the Slums — The Christian End
of a Misspent Life — Nearing the River — Nellie's Death — Who Was
E-----M-----? — Twenty-four Years a Tramp — Last Words.

THOUGH the old Fourth Ward, of which Water Street was
once the symbol and summary, is still counted as the worst
in New York, yet there is small choice between that and
the " Bloody Sixth " Ward, named long ago in the days of the
notorious "Bowery Bhoys." That once name of terror has
given place to a type far bej^ond it in evil, — the " Hoodlum,"
born most often of Irish parents and knowing liberty only as
the extremity of license. Even fifty years ago the trees still
grew all the way np from Water Street out into Chatham
Square and on through the old street, and the generation before
that knew it as a region of gardens and thickets and orchards.
For years the remnant of one of old Peter Stuyvesant's pear-
trees offered its blossoms a,nd fruit to the passer-by, till a
memorial shoot was transplanted to a more congenial spot, and
the old tree which had known the very beginning of things for