If New York has little repute as a city of culture, it has perhaps still less as a city of brotherly love. Its head may be thought shrewd enough in business matters, but whoever accused the city of having a heart or a soul?
Who, for instance, thinks of it as wasting any effort or energy on the unfortunate, the unsuccessful, the incompetent? The prevalent belief is that those who cannot swim go down in the big maelstrom, and no one in the city puts out a hand to save them. But, once more, the prevalent belief is wrong.
The islands where these institutions are located are in summer the coolest and the greenest spots in the city, and at any season they are beautiful in their settings. All of which puts the notion into one’s head that the city has given up to its crippled and aged, its thugs and thieves, its paupers and prisoners, the most livable and lovable portions of the town, keeping for itself only some flat and rather hot districts on the upper avenues.
This looks like a great deal of self-denial in favor of the outcast; but, unfortunately, the motive will not bear critical analysis. It is to be feared that the New Yorkers put the prisoners andthe paupers on the islands because no one else wanted those spots. They were waste places that could be spared very readily; and besides, over there “the slovenly unhandsome corse” could not come betwixt the wind and the nobility. People do not want their public institutions too close to them.
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