Part 2

But after all its artistic finish, its rich decoration, the luxury apparent at a glance, there is a sense of something lacking in this grand habitation. All of these fine apartments leave the impression that they are mere show-places, not the habitual resorts of a family. One of my pet theories is that people’s houses always look like them—they transfer a portion of their personality to everything with which they come habitually into contact. Well, this is nobody’s home; it belongs to the government, and is illustrative of the national wealth and taste, but of no individual peculiarities. The question has often been debated of erecting another residence, which shall literally be the President’s home, while the present mansion shall be devoted exclusively to public receptions and official affairs. Then, and not till then, will the Chief Magistrate taste occasional immunity from outside trespassers, and enjoy a well earned repose.

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Angel of Patience! sent to calm Our feverish brows with cooling palm; To lay the storms of hope and fear, And reconcile life’s smile and tear; The throbs of wounded pride to still, And make our own our Father’s will!—_Whittier._

SUNDAY READINGS.

SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

[_July 6._]

It is true that the task which God lays upon us all is the same—the unceasing surrender of their own wishes to the higher aims which he successively sets before them. But with men of passionate temperament and selfish habits, who are therefore at every turn exposed by circumstances to violent temptation, their natural wishes are, for the most part, so obviously sinful that, though the struggle of renouncing them may be hard, the duty of doing so is clear and pressing. And when such turn to God, their falls in attempting the Christian walk are often frequent enough, or at least their battles with temptation severe enough, to teach them the evil and weakness of their own heart. With men, on the other hand, of calm, pure and affectionate disposition, and trained in conscientious habits, so many of their wishes are for things harmless, or even good in themselves, that it is less easy to see why and how they are to be given up. Such men, just, kindly, and finding much of their own happiness in that of others, live, for the most part, in harmonious relations with those around them, and have little to disturb their consciences beyond the fear of falling short in the path of duty on which they have already entered. But they are exposed to many perils, more insidious, because less startling, than those which beset their more fiercely tempted brethren. They are in danger of depending too much on the respect and love which others so readily yield them; of valuing themselves on a purity which, if ever one of struggle, has come to be one of taste; of prizing intellectual clearness above moral insight and vigor; of mistaking the pleasure they feel in the performance of duty, for real submission to the will of God; and above all, of shrinking from new truths which would, for the time, confuse their belief, and break up the calm symmetry of their lives.

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For … different natures require and receive a very different discipline from God. Sometimes it is by outward affliction that God speaks to souls, thus sinking into the lethargy of formalism; and the loss of friends, or health, or influence suddenly seems to cut off, as it were, half the means of serving him, and to rouse long-forgotten temptations to rise up against his will. Sometimes, on the other hand, he speaks to them inwardly, by opening their eyes to heights of holiness which they had never before steadily contemplated. They now suddenly perceive that many of the fancied duties which have till now occupied their lives and satisfied their consciences, have long ceased to be duties, and have come to be mere habits or pleasures; and that while they have been thus living in self love, unseen and unrepented of, they might have been coming to the knowledge of the higher obligations to which they have been so blind, but which were all implied in their first belief if they had but continued to read it with a single eye.—_From Susanna Winkworth, in “Tauler’s Life and Times.”_

[_July 13._]

Especially, too, if they be distracted and disheartened (as such are wont to be) by the sin and confusion of the world; by the amount of God’s work which still remains undone, and by their own seeming incapacity to do it, they will take heart from the history of John Tauler and his fellows, who, in a far darker and more confused time than the present, found a work to do and strength to do it; who, the more they retired into the recesses of their own inner life, found there that fully to know themselves was to know all men, and to have a message for all men; and who by their unceasing labors of love proved that the highest spiritual attainments, instead of shutting a man up in lazy and Pharisaic self-contemplation, drive him forth to work as his Master worked before him, among the poor, the suffering, and the fallen.

Let such take heart, and toil on in faith at the duty which lies nearest to them. Five hundred years have passed since Tauler and his fellows did their simple work, and looked for no fruit from it, but the saving of one here and there from the nether pit. That was enough for which to labor; but without knowing it, they did more than that. Their work lives, and will live forever, though in forms from which they would have perhaps shrunk had they foreseen them. Let all such therefore take heart. They may know their own weakness; but they know not the power of God in them. They may think sadly that they are only palliating the outward symptoms of social and moral disease; but God may be striking, by some unconscious chance blow of theirs, at a sort of evil which they never suspected. They may mourn over the failure of some seemingly useful plan of their own; but God may be, by their influence, sowing the seed of some plan of his own, of which they little dream. For every good deed comes from God. His is the idea, his the inspiration, and his its fulfillment in time; and therefore no good deed but lives and grows with the everlasting life of God himself. And as the acorn, because God has given it “a forming form,” and life after its kind, bears within it not only the builder oak, but shade for many a herd; food for countless animals, and last, the gallant ship itself, and the materials of every use to which nature or art can put it and its descendants after it throughout all time; so does every good deed contain within itself endless and unexpected possibilities of other good, which may and will grow and multiply forever, in the genial light of him whose eternal mind conceived it, and whose eternal spirit will forever quicken it, with that life of which he is the giver and the Lord.—_From Rev. Charles Kingsley, in “Preface to Tauler’s Sermons.”_

[_July 20._]

It astonishes all thought to observe the minuteness of God’s government, and of the natural and common processes which he carries on from day to day. His dominions are spread out, system above system, filling all height and latitude, but he is never lost in the magnificent. He descends to an infinite detail, and builds a little universe in the smallest things. He carries on a process of growth in every tree and flower and living thing; accomplishes in each an internal organization, and works the functions of an internal laboratory, too delicate all for eye or instrument to trace. He articulates the members and impels the instincts of every living mote that shines in the sunbeam. As when we ascend toward the distant and the vast, so when we descend toward the minute, we see his attention acuminated and his skill concentrated on his object; and the last discernible particle dies out of our sight with the same divine glory on it, as on the last orb that glimmers in the skirt of the universe.

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The works of Christ are, if possible, a still brighter illustration of the same truth. Notwithstanding the vast stretch and compass of the work of redemption, it is a work of the most humble detail in its style of execution. The Savior could have preached a sermon on the mount every morning. Each night he could have stilled the sea, before his astonished disciples, and shown the conscious waves lulling into peace under his feet. He could have transfigured himself before Pilate and the astonished multitudes of the temple. He could have made visible ascensions in the noon of every day, and revealed his form standing in the sun, like the angel of the apocalypse. But this was not his mind. The incidents of which his work is principally made up, are, humanly speaking, very humble and unpretending. The most faithful pastor in the world was never able, in any degree, to approach the Savior, in the lowliness of his manner and his attention to humble things. His teachings were in retired places, and his illustrations drawn from ordinary affairs. If the finger of faith touched him in the crowd, he knew the touch and distinguished also the faith. He reproved the ambitious housewifery of an humble woman. After he had healed a poor being, blind from his birth—a work transcending all but divine power—he returned and sought him out, as the most humble Sabbath-school teacher might have done; and when he had found him, cast out and persecuted by men, he taught him privately the highest secrets of his Messiahship. When the world around hung darkened in sympathy with his cross, and the earth was shaking with inward amazement, he himself was remembering his mother, and discharging the filial cares of a good son. And when he burst the bars of death, its first and final conqueror, he folded the linen clothes and the napkin, and laid them in order apart, showing that in the greatest things he had a set purpose also concerning the smallest. And thus, when perfectly scanned, the work of Christ’s redemption, like the material universe, is seen to be a vast orb of glory, wrought up out of finished particles.—_Horace Bushnell._

[_July 27._]

He who would sympathize must be content to be tried and tempted. There is a hard and boisterous rudeness in our hearts by nature, which requires to be softened down. We pass by suffering gaily, carelessly; not in cruelty, but unfeelingly, because we do not know what suffering is. We wound men by our looks and our abrupt expressions without intending it, because we have not been taught the delicacy, and the tact, and the gentleness, which can only be learned by the wounding of our own sensibilities. There is a haughty feeling of uprightness which has never been on the verge of falling, that requires humbling. There is an inability to enter into difficulties of thought which marks the mind to which all things have been presented superficially, and which has never experienced the horror of feeling the ice of doubt crashing beneath the feet. Therefore, if you aspire to be a son of consolation; if you would partake of the priestly gift of sympathy; if you would pour something beyond commonplace consolation into a tempted heart; if you would pass through the intercourse of daily life with the delicate tact which never inflicts pain; if to that most acute of human ailments, mental doubt, you are ever to give effectual succor—you must be content to pay the price of the costly education. Like him, you must suffer—being tempted.

But remember it is being tempted in all points, _yet without sin_, that makes sympathy real, manly, perfect, instead of a mere sentimental tenderness. Sin will teach you to _feel_ for trials. It will not enable you to judge them; nor to help them in time of need with any certainty.

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Lastly, it is this same human sympathy which qualifies Christ for judgment. It is written that the Father hath committed all judgment to him, _because_ he is the Son of Man.

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The sympathy of Christ is a comforting subject. It is, besides, a tremendous subject; for on sympathy the awards of heaven will be built.… A sympathy for that which is pure implies a repulsion of that which is impure. Hatred of evil is in proportion to the strength of love for good. To love intensely good is to hate intensely evil.… Win the mind of Christ now, or else his sympathy for human nature will not save you from, but only insure, a recoil of abhorrence at last.—_F. W. Robertson._

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Hast thou not learned what thou art often told, A truth still sacred and believed of old, That no success attends on spears and swords Unblest, and that the battle is the Lord’s?—_Cowper._

GROWTH.

By EMILY J. BUGBEE.

Grow as the trees grow, Your head lifted straight to the sky, Your roots holding fast where they lie, In the richness below, Your branches outspread To the sun pouring down, and the dew, With the glorious infinite blue Stretching over your head.

Receiving the storms, That may writhe you, and bend, but not break, While your roots the more sturdily take A strength in their forms. God means _us_, the growth of His trees, Alike thro’ the shadow and shine, Receiving as freely the life-giving wine Of the air and the breeze.

Not sunshine alone, The soft summer dew and the breeze Hath fashioned these wonderful trees, The tempest hath moaned. They have tossed their strong arms in despair, At the blast of the terrible there, In the thunder’s loud tone.

But under it all Were the roots clasping closer the sod, The top still aspiring to God, Who prevented their fall.

Come out from the gloom And open your heart to the light That is flooding God’s world with delight, And unfolding its bloom. His kingdom of Grace Is symboled in all that we see, In budding and leafing of tree And fruit in its place.

TENEMENT HOUSE LIFE IN NEW YORK.

By GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND.

New York City, which is the soul and center of a series of cities which may be called the Metropolitan District, has not far from a million and a half of people, nearly all of whom reside upon an island of rocky formation, surrounded by deep water. Within recent years a district to the north of the island has been annexed to the city, and city protection and privileges partly extended to it, and new parks have just been legalized there, but little that has yet been done in the outlying districts and cities has been effectual to thin out the population of the great central city, whose inhabitants are gathered from all races.

The island of New York extends over thirteen miles along the North River, and it is densely built up as far as 70th Street, on that river, and on the East River it is almost solidly built up to Harlem, which is six or seven miles from the point of the city at the Battery. The middle of the island, to the extent of nine hundred acres, is occupied by the Central Park and other parks, and broad driveways or boulevards take up considerable of the unoccupied or partially occupied portion, so that the time is admitted to be near at hand when all this island will be covered with houses. The character of these houses is already indicated by the tall flats, apartment houses, or tenement houses which are rising, apparently in the country parts, out of the green fields, and some of these are six, seven and eight stories high. Extensive apartment houses, in which the floors are rented or sold, are also being constructed in the vicinity of the park, sometimes to the height of nine, ten and even twelve stories.

It would therefore appear that the future residence of the New Yorker is to be some kind of a tenement structure after the fashion prevailing on the continent of Europe. For some of these costly tenements the rent is as high as six thousand to eight thousand dollars per annum. The cheapest tenements on New York island probably cost twenty dollars a month. Although a bridge has been built at enormous expense to connect New York and Brooklyn, it is a mere convenience, and has exercised no influence on the general character of New York island. While Brooklyn is growing, Harlem relatively is growing faster, at the northern end of New York island. The elevated railroads, of which there are four parallel to each other up and down the length of the island as far as the park, and three the whole length of the island, or to Harlem River, have rather exercised a recalling influence to the city from the suburbs, and the tendency is to extend New York across the Harlem River rather than across the Hudson or the East rivers and the bay, which are often embarrassed by fog, ice, and storm.

The New York manufactures have so expanded that the operatives do not go from the city to the country parts to do a day’s labor, but come from the country parts into New York to earn a living. The protective tariff has transferred the foreign commerce of New York to foreign nations, while it has made New York City our largest manufacturing city. These manufactories compressed on that small island necessarily partake of the tenement house character, and it has been necessary for the legislature to pass laws prohibiting the making of cigars in the tenement houses where the people live. A few years ago I was requested to visit some of these cigar tenements in the vicinity of Tompkins Square, and further uptown, and I found an extraordinary condition of things which has not yet been checked by legislation, because after the prohibitory law was passed it was found to be defective in phraseology, and has to be reënacted. In these tenements could be seen a whole family, men, women and children, living and working their tobacco, and at the same time cooking, sleeping, eating and entertaining, with the tobacco spread over the floor to be dried at night, the children walking on it, and the vapors of the tobacco filling the lungs of the sleepers. In the morning the man got up and began to cut, trim and fill cigars, and put them on the bench before him, and there he sat all day, for at least six days in the week, seldom going out to let the rooms be aired, and some of these buildings, from four to six stories high, were nothing but pigeon cases of such tobacco tenements.

It is to be doubted whether the law can reach such cases, because detection would always involve an intrusion into the living apartments of families, and would make in time such hostility that the law itself would have to be repealed. As in Lyons, France, and in Belgium, where the silk weavers, the lace makers, etc., take their work home, there is no doubt a tendency in New York City to live and toil on the same premises. The population of New York is made up from most of the laboring nations, and each of these brings its own habits, and expects to exercise them freely in this free country. The vices of European laboring society have been imported with the virtues. The city electing its officials by suffrage modifies its usages and government in the direction of these new elements, and the foreigner soon picks up from his demagogues and the small newspapers published in his own language aggressive ideas, which some think are rapidly becoming a great defensive system, some day to plague the metropolis.

Whatever we native Americans think about the foreign methods of living in New York, those methods are as natural to the immigrants as it is for us to occupy a whole house. Indeed, the American in such cities as New York is becoming of necessity the imitator of the foreigner, because the rent of a whole establishment on that cramped island is out of the reach of any but the well employed and independently prosperous.

As this article may come to eyes which have never seen the great city, I will convey to you some slight notion of the structure of New York island. This island is made of gneiss rock, or hard granite, which apparently extended in ribs or ridges, sometimes depressed, sometimes high, and in places like islands, and between these ridges and islands sand and gravel have been deposited, so that when you come to lay out a street, to lay pipes under the street, or to excavate for a house, you may strike solid rock, or you may find quicksand, and therefore the cost of building on the island is greater than almost anywhere on the globe. Probably the steam drills employed to blast on New York island exceed in number all the steam drills in the entire United States. Most of our cities are built on clay or sandy soil, and a cellar can be excavated in two or three days, whereas I have seen building lots in New York, only a hundred feet by twenty to twenty-five feet wide, which took months, or indeed a whole building season, to get the rock out, and when the cellar is excavated it is like a great trough or hole made in solid stone. Naturally, a man who has been at such expense to start his house looks into the air for his recompense. With that solid foundation in the stone he has procured from the cellar he begins to build a tower instead of a house, and to let it out in floors, and for each of these floors he expects to receive higher rent than is elsewhere paid for a large and complete house.

A friend of mine who recently failed disastrously, showed me one of these new flat houses he had put up. It was three lots broad, each lot one hundred feet deep, making a front of seventy-five feet. Each of these lots he held to be worth $30,000, making $90,000 for the situation, though it was not on a fashionable street, but rather up a side street. He then raised one upon another seven apartments on each side of the entrance, and over the entrance were six bachelor apartments, each consisting of only one room, a bed alcove, and a bath closet. Consequently, there would be in such a building twenty tenants, of whom fourteen would be families. These fourteen paid from $1,800 to $1,300 apiece. Each had the same number of rooms, in the same space, the rents only being modified by the position of the floor. The lower floors of course rented higher than the upper floors. Generally speaking, each living place consisted of a parlor and a side room, either library or sitting room, a bath room, and a servant’s bath also, about three bed rooms, beside a servant’s bed room, a dining room, a kitchen, pantries and wardrobes. The only economy in such living lies in the reduction of the number of servants, and in the less expense of furnishing. The proprietor has to keep an engineer, an assistant engineer, a porter and assistant, and perhaps a housekeeper, and of course a watchman. Elevators front and rear accommodate the landlords and the servants. Such a building, exclusive of the ground, probably cost $150,000, and therefore it would be hard work to make ten per cent. upon it after paying salaries, taxes, etc. The bachelor apartments rented from $50 to $30 per month.