I felt particularly conscious of this when, in these quarters, I
encountered that same crying want which I had undertaken to
alleviate.

When I encountered this want, I always found that it had already been
relieved, that the assistance which I had intended to render had
already been given. This assistance had been rendered before my
advent, and rendered by whom? By the very unfortunate, depraved
creatures whom I had undertaken to reclaim, and rendered in such a
manner as I could not compass.

In one basement lay a solitary old man, ill with the typhus fever.
There was no one with the old man. A widow and her little daughter,
strangers to him, but his neighbors round the corner, looked after
him, gave him tea and purchased medicine for him out of their own
means. In another lodging lay a woman in puerperal fever. A woman
who lived by vice was rocking the baby, and giving her her bottle;
and for two days, she had been unremitting in her attention. The
baby girl, on being left an orphan, was adopted into the family of a
tailor, who had three children of his own. So there remained those
unfortunate idle people, officials, clerks, lackeys out of place,
beggars, drunkards, dissolute women, and children, who cannot be
helped on the spot with money, but whom it is necessary to know
thoroughly, to be planned and arranged for. I had simply sought
unfortunate people, the unfortunates of poverty, those who could be
helped by sharing with them our superfluity, and, as it seemed to me,
through some signal ill-luck, none such were to be found; but I hit
upon unfortunates to whom I should be obliged to devote my time and
care.