Odd how one will change. When I first went to work in the slums nothing impressed me so favorably as the education of Irish children. I used to see them on the streets, in the tenements, the little girls in white, with long white veils and flowers, and the little boys with a bow of bright ribbon on one arm, and a gay-colored picture-card. The faces of all of them so happy, so uplifted.
I do not recall a parade during which one or more of these newly confirmed children did not come to me for my congratulations. As a member of the Woman’s Police Reserve I acted as usher for all the parades that took place on Saturday and on holidays. Besides directing a boy scout in the seating of persons, it was my duty to keep children from crowding into the street and running wild over the bleachers.
It was while doing this that little boys and girls used to take occasion to show me their cards—each one pointing out his or her name among those of the class printed on the inside. Some of them would read aloud their verses to me. All of them seemed supremely happy, so sure that in becoming connected with their church they had done something of which they had every right to feel proud. And I still fully agree with them in that attitude.
It so impressed me at the time that I wrote Doctor Percy Stickney Grant, rector of the Church of the Ascension of New York City, asking why Protestant children were not brought up in the same way?—why Protestant children were not taught to feel at home in their church building?—why they were never on such charmingly friendly terms with their minister as Roman Catholic children were with their priest?
I selected Doctor Grant because he seemed to me to be the only Protestant minister in the city of New York who was even trying to understand conditions among the poor of the Greater City, to learn their point of view. I am not one of his parishioners. I do not even belong to the same denomination.
In his reply he gave me a reason, and I judge that he did not wholly agree with me as to the desirability of Protestant children being so trained. Now, after seeing to what this early training leads in the slums, while I do not think it as desirable as I once did, I still feel that all evangelical churches miss their greatest opportunity when they neglect children.
Among the many snarls in which I found myself was a memorable one brought about by my ignorance. While on the staff of the Bellevue social service I had occasion to call several times on the same family, watching the convalescence of three children, all of whom had had pneumonia following an attack of influenza.
The mother, an intelligent and neat Irishwoman, complained that she could not keep the medicine prescribed for one of these children. The youngest member of her family, a two-year-old baby, persisted in drinking it. She had scolded and punished the baby, but in spite of all she could do it had drained three bottles of the medicine. As it was a question of keeping it out of the reach of the baby and yet having it where the mother might easily lay her hands on it, I glanced around her two bare rooms.
“Here you are!” I exclaimed joyfully, and reaching a little above my head I removed a little plaster figure from a little shelf in the corner. “This is out of your baby’s reach, and your saint can stand over here.” So saying I stood the figure on a corner of a lower shelf.
That was a terrible mistake. The woman snatched the little figure and placed it back on the high shelf. No saint would ever forgive a person who moved it from a higher to a lower shrine—I think she said shrine. Her agitation was genuine.