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Show "ANGEL" OF IMMIGRANT GIRLS H3I1 "It's a long time to think back," said Miss Alma Matthews, the "Angel" of Ellis Island, "and one's mind is overflowing over-flowing with memories and stories. I just don't know where to begin. 1 began work here for the Women's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Meth-odist Episcopal church in 18S6, and have been here ever since. "Just now we deal with girls only, but years ago we often had to care for boys too. When I first began work we used to meet the immigrants at Castle Garden. Those were dreadful times. Runners from all the lodging houses, mostly dives, waited for the gates to open, and when the dazed immigrants were turned loose they pounced on them like wolves, and we had our work cut out for us. But New York soon woke up to the situation and changed all, that." In the bright little parlor of the Home at No. 9 State street, New York, there were young women and girls who had come to the annual reception. Although there was the stamp of the American woman already upon them in the instinct for refinements in taste and dress, yet there still remained some of the accent of the old mother tongue, tempered with the easy and picturesquely slangy idiom of the new mother tongue. "These," continued Miss Matthews, "are some of our girls. Of course they are scattered all over this big continent. Look at this little card. We give each girl one of these when they leave us to enter employment or travel to their distant relatives in the west. You have no idea how they treasure this card. We are continually getting requests for new ones when the old ones are worn out or lost. They never forget us." |