ABSTRACT
There is a world of wisdom to be learnt at the Asylums for the Houseless Poor. Those who wish to be taught in this, the severest school of all, should pay a visit to Playhouse-yard, and see the homeless crowds gathered about the Asylum, waiting for the first opening of the doors, with their bare feet-blue and ulcerous with the cold-resting for hours on the ice and snow in the streets, and the bleak stinging wind blowing through their rags. To hear the cries of the hungry, shivering children, and the wrangling of the greedy men, scrambling for a bed and a pound of dry bread, is a thing to haunt one for life. There are four hundred and odd creatures utterly destitute-mothers with infants at their breastsfathers with boys holding by their side-the friendless-the penniless-the shirtless-shoeless-breadless-homeless; in a word, the very poorest of this the very richest city of the world.
