Friendly Visiting among the Poor: A Handbook for Charity Workers

by Mary Ellen Richmond

CHAPTER VII

SPENDING AND SAVING

There is a new school of philanthropists that are inclined to make light of thrift, and to class both industry and thrift among the merely "economic virtues." To this school must belong the settlement worker who spoke of thrift as "ordinarily rather demoralizing." [1] But another objection to thrift which has been made by settlement workers is that it was only good for the working classes "until their employers discovered that there was a margin to their employees' wages."

Is it true that industry and thrift are merely economic virtues? We instinctively feel that they are something more. One has only to think of a lazy man to get an impression of something essentially contemptible and {109} cowardly. On the other hand the man that loves work and throws himself into it with energy is winning more than material rewards. The thriftless and the extravagant, whether rich or poor, are often mean and self-indulgent, lacking the first quality of the unselfish in lacking self-control. In teaching industry and thrift, therefore,—though these virtues, like others, have an unlovely side,—we may feel that we are dealing with two of the elements out of which not only character but all the social virtues are built.

Nor will the pessimistic theory that the worker must spend as much as possible on indifferent food and housing in order to keep up the rate of wages, bear the light of common sense. It is true that the man who merely hoards for the sake of hoarding, developing no new and higher wants, no clearly defined aims, will still be almost as helpless as the most thriftless. But no one is more helpless against the encroachments of employers than the man who lives from hand to mouth, whose necessities press ever hard upon him, crippling him and crippling those {110} with whom he competes in the open market. Then again, successful coöperation is impossible to the thriftless. The lack of self-control, the lack of power to defer their pleasures, unfits them for combined effort and makes it more difficult for them to be loyal to their fellow-workmen. Visitors can advocate thrift, therefore, for both economic and moral reasons.

There is a use of the word "thrift" that may help us to realize its best meaning. Gardeners call a plant of vigorous growth a "thrifty" plant. Let us bear this in mind in our charitable work, and remember that anything that hinders vigorous growth is essentially unthrifty. Thrift means something more than the hoarding of small savings. In fact, saving at the expense of health, or training, or some other necessary preparation for successful living, is always unthrifty. It is unthrifty to live in damp rooms to secure cheaper rent; it is unthrifty to put aside money for burial insurance when the children are underfed; it is unthrifty either to buy patent medicines or to neglect early symptoms of disease in order to save a doctor's bill; above all, it {111} is unthrifty to take young children away from school and force them to become breadwinners. Thrift, therefore, includes spending as well as saving.

Charity workers often complain that, in the poor families known to them, thrift is impossible, because there is nothing to save. More often than not this means that their relations with the poor have ceased as soon as acute distress is past, and that they have stopped visiting at the very time when improved material conditions have made the best friendly services possible.

Any attempt to divide the poor into classes is to be deprecated, because human beings are not easily classified. But, speaking roughly, and using the classification merely as a temporary convenience, charity workers will find that the thrift habit divides the poor into three classes. First, those who are very thrifty, and this is a large class. Misfortune may overtake the most provident during long periods of industrial depression, or they may become temporarily dependent through sickness or some unforeseen accident. The second class includes {112} those who are willing to work when work is plentiful, but who have little persistence or resourcefulness in procuring work. In the busy season they spend lavishly on cheap pleasures and soon become applicants for relief in troubled times. Debt has no terrors for them, and, from their point of view, it is useless to save because they cannot save enough to make it seem worth while. In the third class we find the lazy and vicious, who shirk work, and, living by their wits, are better off in bad times than in good. "It is with the second class that the charitable may work lasting harm or lasting good. To let them feel that no responsibility rests with them during the busy season, and that all the responsibility rests with us to relieve their needs when the busy season is over, rapidly pushes them into the third class. To teach them, on the other hand, the power and cumulative value of the saving habit, and so get them beforehand with the world, is to place them in the first class and soon render them independent of our material help." [2]

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A characteristic of the second class is the habit of buying on credit. The book at the corner grocery not only tempts the purchaser into buying unnecessary things, but the prices are higher than the market rate for inferior goods. A student in a university laboratory, who is also a friendly visitor, had occasion to use some sugar in one of his experiments, and, being hurried, purchased it from the nearest corner grocery, paying more than the usual price. It proved to be badly adulterated, and the user has been more careful since in advising his poor friends about purchasing provisions. The credit system is the natural outcome of uncertain income, and for that reason is hard to avoid, but in a number of instances it is continued long after the necessity that caused the buyer to ask credit has ceased to exist.

Another and less excusable form of the credit system is buying household goods on the instalment plan. The poor are often teased into this by glib agents. An old woman, whose income was not sufficient to keep her alive, contracted to buy a clock on the instalment plan for $8.00 because she needed one when she {114} occasionally had a day's job of cleaning. When her visitor remonstrated that a dollar clock would have done quite as well, she replied triumphantly, "Yes, but this one is only 25 cents a week!" When payments cannot be made, and the purchaser is threatened with the loss of the goods, it is possible to be too hasty in rushing to the rescue. The Fifteenth Report of the Boston Associated Charities records such an experience. "A family had purchased furniture upon the instalment plan, when the husband was suddenly deprived of his job. The furniture was about to be seized, when generous sympathizers came to the rescue, and redeemed the articles. Scarcely had the donors time to realize what a financial relief they had been able to give to the troubled family before the same bit of folly was repeated, and 'parlor furniture' was added to the inventory of goods and chattels to be paid for by the week." [3] When instalment men threaten seizure, it is well to find out whether they are acting within the law. They have been known to take advantage of ignorant clients. But the system {115} itself is bad in that it encourages the purchase of unnecessary things, and at a great advance upon cash prices.

When the poor man would borrow, he is often exposed to the impositions of a class of unscrupulous money lenders, who violate the laws against usury, but hope to escape punishment or loss through the ignorance of their customers. The pitiful part of it is that the self-respecting poor often fall into their traps. A family in pecuniary straits for the first time is naturally attracted by the specious advertisements of the chattel-mortgage companies, which offer to lend money on goods that the borrower keeps in his possession, and promise that all negotiations shall be strictly confidential. This seems an easy way out of present difficulties without loss of self-respect or any painful publicity. But the terms of the contract are far from easy in reality. Through a system of bonuses, extra fees, or monthly payments for "guaranteeing" the loan, interest amounting to from 100 per cent to 200 per cent a year is wrung from the borrowers. Bled dry at last, and unable to pay {116} such extortionate interest and the principal too, their goods are seized, and the members of the household become objects of charity. Whereever these chattel-mortgage companies gain any foothold, many of their victims are applicants for relief. The law usually furnishes ample protection, but the companies flourish through the poor man's ignorance of the law.

As soon as a visitor learns that the goods of a poor family are mortgaged, he should, at once, whether the company is pressing for payment or not, learn the terms of the contract, and get an opinion as to its validity from some friend who is a lawyer. The usual form of contract in Maryland is a six months' mortgage, bearing 6 per cent interest, with the legal charge for recording deducted from the amount advanced to the borrower. But, in addition to this, notes for from $2.00 upward, according to the size of the loan, are made payable monthly to some third party who is supposed to guarantee the loan. Lawyers advise no payments on these notes, and that principal and legal interest be offered at the expiration of the mortgage. If this offer {117} is refused, the company renders itself liable to damage proceedings in seizing the furniture. In each case, however, it is better to have a lawyer's advice, as the contracts vary, and ignorant men, who thought they were signing a six months' mortgage, have been known to sign a one month's mortgage instead.

The law against usury can protect those who know enough to apply it, but the poor man remains unprovided with any satisfactory means of negotiating a loan. The legal rate of interest is too low to make loans on chattels profitable. The organization, by public-spirited business men, of companies that will be careful in taking risks, and will secure special legislation enabling them to charge not more than a reasonable rate of interest, is the only remedy. Companies like these have been organized successfully in Boston and Buffalo by philanthropists who were also business men and wise enough to realize the importance of placing such loan agencies on an equitable business basis. Several advantages are apparent from the working of these equitable loan companies. Those who cannot {118} properly negotiate a loan are discouraged from applying, because the loans are made with great care. Those who get the loans are fairly dealt with, and are helped at the right time in a way that saves them from becoming applicants for charity. Best of all, the other loan companies are forced to reduce their rate of interest, and offer fairer terms.

The habit of pawning goods has never become general among our native population, but among the foreign poor of our large cities it is the common practice; and here, too, the philanthropic pawnshop, started at the instance of the New York Charity Organization Society, has reduced the percentage charged by other pawnshops in New York.

This new interest taken by philanthropy in the poor man as borrower is still in the tentative and experimental stage, but there is an encouraging analogy between its beginnings and the early history of the savings banks. "It is seldom remembered," says Mrs. Lowell, "that the great scheme of savings banks was originally conceived and put into operation as a means of helping the poor. The two first {119} savings banks were started in Hamburg in 1778, and in Berne in 1787, and both were more or less closely restricted to the use of domestic servants, handicraftsmen and the like. The Hamburg bank was part of the general administration of the poor funds." [4]

When the poor man attempts to save, what inducements have greatest weight with him? First of all, he is likely to save for some definite and immediate object, because he cannot spend in any effective way until he has saved. In teaching shiftless families to put by small sums, therefore, it is well to keep some definite object in view. For instance, persuade the children to save to buy needed clothing, or the parents to save to buy proper clothing, bedding, etc., for the children. This strengthens family affection and leads the way to a bank account later, by showing what money can do.[5]

Next to such immediate inducements to thrift comes the dread of pauper burial, which is a far more influential motive with the poor than the dread of either dependence or privation. {120} Respectability is measured in poor neighborhoods by funerals, and, whether the neighborhood standards of morality and respectability are ours or not, we cannot afford, in our charity work, to ignore them. Extravagant funerals are an evil, and we should use our influence to discourage extravagance, even where it is rooted quite as much in affection as in vanity; but an unsympathetic attitude on the part of the charitable, an inability to understand the neighborhood point of view, has helped to encourage an extravagant form of saving, namely, burial and child insurance.

To enter into a discussion of the merits of industrial insurance, as furnished in this country to the poor, is outside the scope of this book, and the matter is treated quite fully, moreover, in another volume of this series ("The Development of Thrift," by Mary Willcox Brown), but the most enthusiastic advocates of industrial insurance can hardly claim for it that it is an inexpensive form of saving. A very large percentage of industrial policies lapse, and it is a common thing to find that those who have kept up their payments and have {121} become beneficiaries, spend everything on the funeral of the insured. "Of $200.00 insurance received by one widow, $180.00 was given to the undertaker, and the remaining $20.00 was expended for a mourning outfit for herself. The family were being aided by the Emergency Society at that time." [6] In New York, the agents of the Charity Organization Society regard the following as a typical instance: A woman's husband was insured for $136.00. When he died, she called the same undertaker that had buried a child for them. His charges on the former occasion had been moderate. The woman told him that she wanted a very inexpensive funeral with only one carriage. This was the only instruction that she gave. The undertaker asked whether the deceased was insured, and was told that he was, whereupon he offered to collect the insurance and to pay over to the widow what was left. His bill amounted to $102.50. These instances do not indicate any collusion, of course, between the undertakers and the insurance companies.

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We have seen in another chapter that sickness is one of the most persistent causes of distress, and only in rare instances does a death occur that has not been preceded by weeks and often months of sickness. The poor man needs sick benefits more than burial or life insurance, and the children of the poor stand in need of many other things besides decent burial. In fact, the money spent in child insurance, which can be of no possible benefit to the child, is often needed to protect the child's health or provide for its education. These should be a parent's first care from no sordid motive, and yet it is a legitimate view to regard children as an investment. The poor man has a right to expect support from his children when he is no longer able to work, and to neglect their best interests is to cripple his own future.

The beneficial societies and fraternal orders furnish a means of saving for sick benefits, but they are of such varying degrees of merit and trustworthiness that it is impossible to recommend them without qualification. They have not gained the same position that the {123} friendly societies hold in England, partly, perhaps, because they are not subject in America to the same legal restrictions and official inspection.

Though the savings banks are open to the objection that money is too easily withdrawn from them, and is not, therefore, always available at the time of greatest need, yet, after making every allowance for this, the savings banks remain one of the safest and best means of putting by small savings. Another way of saving, which is not open to the objection of too easy withdrawals, is the purchase of shares in a good building and loan association.

Some banks provide facilities for small savings by selling special stamps of small denominations, and, in several cities, charities have established stamp saving societies to promote the saving habit, especially among children. When $5.00 has been saved in this way, a bank account should be opened. One visitor has found that, in getting children to save, it helps to have a stamp-saving card of one's own, and show it. As a means of teaching children to save, visitors should encourage the {124} introduction of stamp savings into our public schools.

Another way to promote small savings is to send volunteer collectors among the poor, who will visit certain families weekly, and collect the five and ten cent pieces until enough has been saved to open a bank account. This work may be combined with friendly visiting, though the collector must visit at regular intervals, and in many cases it is better for the friendly visitor to visit at irregular intervals. One visitor always leaves a small bank with her family when she goes away in summer, and the unlocking of this on her return has become a family ceremony.

Saving for fuel becomes an admirable object lesson, when it is used to establish the saving habit and not allowed to stop with the mere purchase. During the summer, families can be encouraged to put by small sums weekly, and, instead of buying coal in small quantities at very high prices during the winter, can save more than half the cost by buying a ton or more early in the season.

In teaching thrift in a careless and shiftless {125} home, we can get many valuable suggestions from more thrifty families in the same neighborhood, or with the same income. To effectively advise about expenditure, one must know the family budget of receipts and expenditures, and often this is more than the family knows. Learning to take note of the items is the first lesson in thrift. The most important thing, however, is our own attitude of mind. "We must not get into the habit of saying, 'Poor things; they can do nothing.' We should rid ourselves of the habit of treating them, not as men and women, people who can look after themselves with strength in their muscles and brain-power in their heads, but as animals whom we allow to live in society along with ourselves, taking for granted that they are deprived of, or cannot exert, those faculties which go to make up the strength and fibre of men and women. I assure you, those who are inclined to take a sentimental turn have great temptations put before them to treat the poor as if they were dependent animals." [7]

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Collateral Readings: "The Development of Thrift," Miss Mary Willcox Brown. "The Standard of Life," Mrs. Bernard Bosanquet, especially the essay on "The Burden of Small Debts." Annual Reports of the Workingmen's Loan Association, Boston; the Provident Loan Association, New York; and the Provident Loan Company, Buffalo. For stamp savings, see reports of New York Charity Organization Society (Committee on Penny Provident Fund).

[1] See Report on the Questions drawn up by Present Residents in our College Settlements, p. 17. Published by the Church Social Union, Boston.

[2] Leaflet on "Summer Savings," published by the Baltimore Charity Organization Society.

[3] p. 25.

[4] "Public Relief and Private Charity," p. 109.

[5] See Fourth Report of Boston Associated Charities, p. 38.

[6] Eighteenth Report of Boston Associated Charities, p. 27.

[7] C. S. Loch in Fifteenth Report of Baltimore Charity Organization Society.

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CHAPTER VIII

RECREATION

I have said that the power to defer our pleasures is a mark of civilization. There is another mark which, in this busy America of ours, is often denied to the well-to-do as much as to the poor, and that is the power to enjoy our pleasures after we have earned them. Charity workers still underestimate the value of the power to enjoy. They are likely to regard mere contentment as a model virtue in the poor, whereas that discontent which has its root in more varied and higher wants is a splendid spur to progress. Professor F. G. Peabody quotes Lasalle in naming as one of the greatest obstructions to progress among the poor, "The cursed habit of not wanting anything." The power of enjoyment seems dead in many a down-trodden, sordid life, while in many others it wastes itself upon unworthy and degrading pleasures.

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There is a passage in one of Miss Octavia Hill's essays that throws a flood of light on this question. She says that the love of adventure, the restlessness so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon, makes him, under certain conditions, the greatest of explorers and colonizers, and that this same energy, under other conditions, helps to brutalize him. Dissatisfied with the dull round of duties that poverty enforces upon him, he seeks artificial excitement in the saloon and the gambling den. It is useless to preach contentment to such a man. We must substitute healthier excitements, other and better wants, or society will fail to reform him. In all the forms of play, all the amusements of the people, though some of them may seem to us coarse and degrading, there is this same restless seeking to express what is highest and best in man; not only to express his love of adventure, but his love of social intercourse and his love of beauty. When we once realize that certain vices are merely a perversion of good instincts, we have taken the first step toward finding their cure.

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It has been said that a man's pleasures give us his true measure, and that to change the measure is to change the man. From this point of view, the subject of recreation is very near the heart of the friendly visitor's relation with the poor. We may have made a conscientious study of the family expenses and income, of the sanitary surroundings, of the work record and diet, but we shall not know the family until we know what gives them pleasure. One visitor says that she never feels acquainted with a poor family until she has had a good laugh with them. A defective sense of humor in the visitor is a great hindrance to successful work: poor people are no fonder of dismal folk than the rest of us. When we come to recreations, friendly visiting not only makes large demands upon what we know, but upon what we are. Our pleasures measure us quite as much as they measure our poor friends, and, unless we have kept fresh our own power of enjoyment, we cannot hope to impart this power to the poor, or to give them new and better wants.

Granting that we have them ourselves, what {130} are some of the healthy wants that we should try to pass on to the poor? Taking the simplest first, we should try to introduce simple games and a love of pure fun into the family circle. I am indebted to Miss Beale of the Boston Children's Aid Society for the following list of simple games, so arranged as to include standing and sitting games for each evening:

FIRST EVENING. SECOND EVENING.

1. Hiding the thimble. 1. Stage coach. 2. Bean bag. 2. Buzz. 3. Dominoes. 3. Elements.

THIRD EVENING. FOURTH EVENING.

1. Hot butter blue beans. 1. How, when, and where. 2. Jack straws. 2. Counting buzz. 3. Fruit basket. 3. Magical spelling.

FIFTH EVENING. SIXTH EVENING.

1. Go-bang. 1. Tea-kettle. 2. Spot on the carpet. 2. Musical chairs. 3. Throwing lights. 3. Logomachy.

SEVENTH EVENING. EIGHTH EVENING.

1. Telling a story. 1. Pigs in clover. 2. Blowing the feather. 2. I have a rooster to sell. 3. Authors. 3. Courtesying.

In teaching such games it is best to begin with the children, but the parents can {131} sometimes be induced to join in. Story-telling is also an unfailing resource in our efforts to amuse the children.

But, during a good part of the year, there are many outdoor games in which the children can be interested, and, now that the trolley cars have brought the country so much nearer, country trips for the whole family should be planned at frequent intervals. There are few things more pathetic than the dread with which many of our city poor think of the country, and to teach them country pleasures is to restore to them a birthright of which they have been robbed. A love of plants and window-gardening is another healthful pleasure. Mignonette, geranium, wandering Jew, and saxifrage grow well in small spaces. To one family, living in tenement rooms where there was no sun, a visitor gave a pot of geranium. Later, the woman said: "We have taken it out on the roof every day when it was pleasant to let the sun shine on it When I couldn't take it, Mary did; and, for fear it should get stolen, we stay and sit by it. I take the baby with me too, {132} and the baby likes the sun as well as the flower does."

With all the added interest in outdoor exercise, and the freer, healthier life of our time, we are slow to pass such advantages on to the poor. The women of the family need much urging, sometimes, to get them to take any outdoor exercise. Bicycles are becoming cheaper, and a bicycle would be a good investment in any family where all the adults are working at indoor occupations. If the visitor find a gymnasium not too far away, the boys and their father should be induced to go to it. With these added interests, a holiday will no longer be a thing to be dreaded by the wife and mother, for there will be interesting things to do, instead of mere loafing on the corner or at the saloon. One visitor helped to cure a man of drinking by getting him an accordion—a fact that has a touch of pathos, as indicating the poverty of interests in the poor fellow's life.

The pleasures of books, music, and pictures ought to touch every life at some point. Some aesthetic pleasures, it is true, are won only {133} after long study and preparation, but the best art is universal in its appeal. So far as books are concerned, our free libraries have made us familiar with this view. The visitor should know the rules of the nearest library, and should be ready to go there with some member of the family, in case it is unknown to them. The saloon-keepers in Ward 10, Boston, complain that the new branch of the Public Library opened there has interfered with their business. Beside encouraging the use of a lending library, the visitor should be ready to lend books, newspapers, and magazines, and should be glad to borrow a book from the family, when this will help to strengthen friendly relations.

The refining influence of good pictures is just beginning to be recognized by the charitable. Friendly visitors cannot always organize large loan exhibitions, such as are given in the poorer neighborhoods of London, New York, and Boston, but they can lend a good photograph or engraving, when they are going away, and can replace it, from time to time, by another picture. Such loans have {134} been known, like the Eastlake screen in Stockton's story, to revolutionize the arrangement of the household. Then, too, a picture often conveys a lesson more effectively than a sermon can. Mrs. Barnett tells, in "Practicable Socialism," [1] of a loan exhibition in Whitechapel, where Oxford students acted as guides and explained the pictures. "Mr. Schmalz's picture of 'Forever' had one evening been beautifully explained, the room being crowded by some of the humblest people, who received the explanation with interest, but in silence. The picture represented a dying girl to whom her lover had been playing his lute, until, dropping it, he seemed to be telling her with impassioned words that his love is stronger than death, and that, in spite of the grave and separation, he will love her forever. I was standing outside the exhibition in the half-darkness, when two girls, hatless, with one shawl between them thrown round both their shoulders, came out. They might not be living the worst life, but, if not, they were low down enough to be familiar with it, and to see {135} in it only the relation between men and women. The idea of love lasting beyond this life, making eternity real, a spiritual bond between man and woman, had not occurred to them until the picture with the simple story was shown them. 'Real beautiful, ain't it all?' said one. 'Ay, fine, but that "Forever" I did take on with that,' was the answer."

I have lived nearly all my life in a community where, during the last twenty-five years, there has been a great change in musical taste. George Peabody left money to found a Conservatory of Music, and a few music lovers spent time and money to keep alive an Oratorio Society. Later, the visits of Thomas' Orchestra and of the Boston Symphony Orchestra added to the strength of these local musical centres; but for many years the Peabody Conservatory was ridiculed and misunderstood, and the Oratorio Society was usually in financial straits. I mention these facts, because persons who are dependent upon the Conservatory and the visiting orchestras for all the good music they know have said to me that it must be impossible for poor people ever to appreciate good {136} music. But for the benefactions of George Peabody, and of Mr. Higginson (who made the Boston Orchestra possible), and of a few others, they themselves could never have known the pleasure of enjoying great and noble music, and, to this extent, at least, they are as dependent as the poorest; but they are quite sure that the great composers have no message for the poor. There is difficult music, of course, which only the scholarly musician can appreciate; but much of the very best music, if we once have a chance to become familiar with it, appeals to all of us. Then the artistic temperament is not a matter of either condition or race, as one of our young American musicians has pointed out. Lecturing with musical illustrations to audiences on the East Side in New York, and to audiences of negroes in Philadelphia, he is convinced that "if good music were accessible to the masses, it would be appreciated, and go far to elevate them."

"My boy," wailed a poor mother, "was that fond of music it took him straight to the bad!" And no wonder, for music—apart from the tawdriest of gospel hymn tunes—meant for {137} him the saloon and the low concert hall. We need, to counteract such influences, plenty of cheap concerts of good music; concerts following the plan of Theodore Thomas with his well-to-do audiences, who were given first the best that they liked, and then were taught gradually to like better and better selections.

All the higher recreations encroach upon the field of education, and I am tempted to mention, in passing, some of the most promising educational efforts for encouraging study among the people. The American Society for the Extension of University Teaching, which has its headquarters at Philadelphia, has conducted very successful courses of lectures in poor neighborhoods. The enormous attendance upon the free evening lectures given by the Department of Education in New York school buildings is also significant. The popularity of the educational classes in working girls' clubs, Christian associations, and people's institutes is another good sign. But I mention these here merely to emphasize their importance as tools for the visitor. In families where an ambition has been aroused, the visitor {138} should foster it by making connection with some such educational agencies.

There is a very obvious form of snobbery that we are quick enough to detect, the snobbery that looks down on people who have to work hard and wear shabby clothes. But an even more dangerous form of snobbery, because not so obvious, is the intellectual form, which claims an exclusive right to culture, and looks down upon the simple and unsophisticated. The fact is, that, save for a very gifted few, we are all of us dependent upon the gifts of others for what we know and what we enjoy. Probably there never was a neighborhood so exclusive but many were there upon whom education, refinements, and beautiful things were quite wasted; and there never was a neighborhood so poor but some were there who longed for beauty, education, and a larger and fuller life.

It will be seen in the next chapter that, when we attempt to supply the poor with the necessities of life, our path is beset with difficulties. But when we give them those things which, though not necessary to life, yet refine {139} and elevate it, we can do them only unmixed good. Gifts of books, flowers, growing plants, pictures, and simple decorations, or, as in one instance known to me, the present of several rolls of light-colored wall-paper to brighten a dark room—these help to express our friendliness, and have an added value as coming from a friend. Above all, however, we should not hesitate to share with the poor our delight in healthful and refining pleasures, and should find it natural to talk freely with them about our own interests.

Collateral Readings: "Parlor Games for the Wise and Otherwise," H. E.
H. "Faggots for the Fireside," Mrs. L. P. Hale. "American Girls' Own
Book of Work and Play," Mrs. Helen Campbell. "Gymnastic Games,"
published by Boston Normal School of Gymnastics. "Methods of Social
Reform," W. S. Jevons. "Picture Exhibitions in Lower New York," A. C.
Bernheimer in "Forum," Vol. XIX, pp. 610 sq.

[1] pp. 119 sq.

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