In the lower stretches of the Bowery, in New York, that street once famous for a tawdry sprightliness¹ but now run to humdrum² and commonplace, stands the Bowery Mission. It is really a pretentious³ affair of its kind, the most showy and successful of any religious effort directed toward reclaiming⁴ the bum⁵, the sot, the crook⁶ and the failure. As a matter of fact, the three former, and not always the latter, are not easily reclaimed⁷ by religion or anything else. It is only when the three former degenerate⁸ into the latter that the thought of religion seems at all enticing⁹, and then only on the side that leans toward help for themselves. The Bowery Mission as an institution gathers its full quota¹⁰ of these failures, and its double row of stately old English benches, paid for by earnest Christians¹¹ who have heard of it through much newspaper heralding¹³ of its services, are nightly filled and overflowing¹⁴.