If you have ever walked about the streets of some of these cities before the rest of the world was astir, at gray dawn, you must have seen them shivering along and scratching among the refuse cast out by the tenants of the neighbouring houses.

O Fred, Fred! in my professional career, short though it has been, I have seen much of these poor old women, and many others whom the world never sees on the streets at all, experiencing a slow, lingering death by starvation, and fatigue, and cold.

It is the foulest blot on our country that there is no sufficient provision for the _aged poor_." "I have seen those old women too," replied Fred, "but I never thought very seriously about them before." "That's it--that's just it; people don't _think_, otherwise this dreadful state of things would not continue.

Just listen _now_, for a moment, to what I have to say.

But don't imagine that I'm standing up for the poor in general.