And who were these neighbors? Drunken, dissolute women, vile brothels and viler saloons, for the saloon trafficked in the vice of the other. Those who lived there were Northfield graduates, girls of refinement and modesty. Yet these were the neighbors they had chosen for their own. At all hours of the night the bell would ring, and they would come, sometimes attended by policemen. Said one of these:
"We have this case. She isn't wanted in this home, or in that institution. She doesn't come under their rules. We thought you might stretch yours to take her in. Else she goes straight to the devil."
Yes! that was what he said. And she: "Bless you; we have no rules. Let her come in." And she took her and put her to bed.
In the midnight hour my friend of Heartsease hears of a young girl, evidently a new-comer, whom the brothel or the saloon has in its clutch, and she gets out of bed, and, going after her, demands _her sister_, and gets her out from the very jaws of hell. Again, on a winter's night, a drunken woman finds her way to her door--a married woman with a husband and children. And she gets out of her warm bed again, and, when the other is herself, takes her home, never leaving her till she is safe.
I found her papering the walls and painting the floor in her room. I said to her that I did not think you could do anything with those women,--and neither can you, if they are just "those women" to you. Jesus could. One came and sat at his feet and wept, and dried them with her hair.
"Oh," said she, "it isn't so! They come, and are glad to stay. I don't know that they are finally saved, that they never fall again. But here, anyhow, we have given them a resting spell and time to think. And plenty turn good."
She told me of a girl brought in by her brother as incorrigible. No one knew what to do with her. She stayed in that atmosphere of affection three months, and went forth to service. That was nearly half a year before, and she had "stayed good." A chorus girl lived twelve years with a man, who then cast her off. Heartsease sent her out a domestic, at ten dollars a month, and she, too, "stayed good."
"I don't consider," said the woman of Heartsease, simply, "that we are doing it right, but we will yet."