IN THE CITY OF FADS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2362, 1 June 1899, Page 59

IN THE CITY OF FADS.

THE SAMARITAN HOME.

By Edith Skarle Grossmaxn.

And is there love in heaven? And is there

love In heavenly spirits for these creatures base That doth compassion of their evils move? There is, else~much more wretched were the case Of man than beasts. But, oh! the exceeding grace Of highest God, that loves his creatures so! And all His works with mercy doth embrace, That blessed angels He sends to and fro, To serve to wicked man, to serve his cruel fos.

— Spenser.

There could hardly be a greater contrast between two charitable institutions than there is between the pleasant Jubilee

Home and the Samaritan Home ; and none that pointed a sterner moral. The Samari-tan-Home was the old Addington gaol taken ovei by some kind-hearted persons who wanted to give at least some comfort and spiritual help to the morally incurable. .Chill and cheerless it stands back from the muddy Lincoln road, where the rumbling trams and carts pass daily by. High stone walls surround the courtyard, and it is .some time before our ring is answered and .the gate unlocked. Within these wjills

■ come the wrecks of humanity — old and -young. Just now -there are 60 inmates with only the matron and two nurses to look after all. The bad weather has drifted them; when luck comes again, nearly all '.will be off. As the institution is a, private one, it has no hold over them. The small State .grant is quite insufficient to manage on, and the public have little interest in the grim building that shelters the waifs an,d strays of our streets. " Economise — cut down expenses," say the board when the matron complains that she. is expected to keep 60 on the same allowance as they made for 12. Voluntary subscriptions and gifts scantily eke out the State dole. The building is now in sad want of repairs. The rain forces a way in under the entrance door; the chimneys smoke. Around the draughty corridor, with its dull, high walls of white, are rows of prison cells on each side. Downstairs are the' old women, brought here partly to keep them from contaminating the idle, foolish girls who roam the streets at night. Last week the drowned body of one of these old women was taken up from the Avon, where she had found her final rest. One lively inmate, with a black bruise under her eye, is quite a celebrated character — a notorious London pickpocket. She has been out lately, and hence this mark of_ a street fight. In a small dining room a group of grey-haired incurables are sitting together with some coarse sewing on hand. '

The men live in a different building, ad"jaceut to" this one; they do better work and especially excel in making large mats out of pieces of tweed sent by the Kaiapoi Woollen factory. Some of these mats are used for the Home, others are sold -to anyone who will buy them. In the kitchen and scullery we lincl other women going" grudgingly'about their tasks. Why should they work without pay'/ they ask. It says a good deal for the matron's management that with such attendance the place is well scrubbed and clean ; there is no disorder, llnd' evidently, no waste. As the doors of the bedroom cells are opened, stifling odours come out. In one sits a bent and aged creauue fumbling at home beads and rags. "Paralysed and childish," says the matron laconically, and we pass on. Tre' humane care and kindness that first created this institution have put a few touches -here, and there to lighten its gloom. Efforts have been, made, and not altogether unsuccessfully, to train the women to improve and adorn their rooms. The four dismal walls are half covered with newspaper prints and coloured scraps neatly pasted on, and the beds and chairs and stools have gay patchwork quilts and covers. One untcnanted cell is heaped with torn papeis from which the wall scraps are selected. Nothing is rejected or wasted. " Rubbish shot here," the matron explains grimly. IJpstairs are the younger women, kept as much as possible from the " oaths, insults, filth, and monstrous blasphemies " that sometimes find a vent among the inhabitants of. the ground floor. There are a few cells here, but several rooms are larger and less depressing. In the infirmary a fire is burning, and by it is sitting a young and handsome girl flushed with a kind of sullen shame; the look of a naughty child, nothing more. A young mother is lying in hsr bed, her newborn infant sleeping peacefully on her arm. In the mnsery the little garments that the women are sewing, the baby crying in its cradle, the pretty yearling toddler on the floor are the saddest travesty of home life it is possible to ima-> gine. The rule is that the mothers must stay with their infants six months, otherwise many would desert them. As it is, they grow fond of them, fonder, perhaps, than many an over-worked mother of the respectable poor. Yet even here the good Samaritan with me sees no hope. She has just had word that •Annie," the pet of the Home, has gone back to her old ways. Christina Rossetti's lines haunt me as we go down the stairs and out into the open air of winter: Nay, too steep for hill mounting; nay, too late for cost counting: This downhill- path is easy, but there s no turning back. Here beneath the same roof are gathered three generations ; little infants innocent as yours and mine, born into sin— poor flowers so soon thrown down to be trampled in the mud and dust of life ; mothers, some young and still keeping the beauty of womankind, but sinking deeper and deeper ; end below the old and grey-haired, unrepentant—on the verge of" death. The love that penetrates even these walls lifts a protesting hand of human mercy against the inexorable justice of Nature. The texts about the place, " God ble^s our Home," and " C4od is Love," appeal against a sterner law written large on every cell and every face* " The wages of sin is Death."