“If taken in, will you remain a month, keep the necessary rules of the house, and do your share of its work?”
These question are “the hinge on which the door swings, and when once a woman crosses its threshold she stands on her honor, and is trusted just as far as she will allow.”
Cramped for room, dependent upon voluntary contributions for furnishing, provisions, and all the running expenses of such an undertaking, the first year found them without debt, and with ninety-nine women sheltered and protected, sixty-two of whom found places, and, with but few exceptions, proved faithful and worthy of trust. During the second year two hundred and twenty-four were helped, cramped quarters forcing the managers to refuse many applications. Half of the income for that year was earned by the inmates, in laundry, sewing room, and days’ work outside. A larger house was taken, but the same principle of free admission continued. Many who left the Home voluntarily, and some even who had been expelled, returned, penitent and sorrowful, and were received again, and given another chance, the only bar to return being in the discovery that the influence of a woman in some cases did more harm than could be counteracted in the Home, in which case there is written across her name, “Not to be admitted again.”
A matron and two assistant matrons are employed, the matron having general charge of the house, keys, and work; the first assistant, of sewing room and laundry; and the second of the kitchen and all household supplies. But thirty women can be accommodated at any one time, and it is hoped that a building especially for the purpose may soon give the added facilities so imperatively demanded. The work holds little poetry, and the expression of some of its subjects is so debased and apparently hopeless, that one gentleman, accustomed to give freely, remarked: “I see nothing better to do than to tie a rope round their necks and pitch them into the river.”
The poor souls were themselves much of his mind, but a month or two gave a very different aspect to affairs, work and the certainty of sympathy bringing new life. Undisciplined and weak, in the power of appetite both inherited and acquired, they have fought battles whose terror the untempted can never know; fought and won, the roll now holding hundreds of names. Working against perpetual obstacle and disadvantage, the story of the five years is one of triumph for managers as well as managed. “We began,” said one of the workers, “holding in one hand the key to an empty house, for which the rent was paid for one month, and in the other hand all our worldly possessions—five dollars—and since that time we have bought our present home, and furnished it comfortably for our work. It accommodates thirty-five women, and three matrons, and we have paid on it $5,000, carrying a mortgage of $9,000. None of these things are the ultimate of our work. They are but means to an end, and that end the saving of the lives and souls of these women.”
Effort of as extended a nature is possible only for a body of earnest workers, but this mere hint of its nature and results may perhaps convince some who have doubted its possibility, and serve as the clue to companion methods in country towns. Faith in possibilities, both human and divine, has been the condition of success for what is already accomplished, and the village may test these no less than the city. Reports filled with every practical detail may be had by addressing a note to “The Wayside Home, 352 Bridge Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.,” and the writer stands ready, at any time, to answer questions as to methods, assuring all doubters that, for all patient workers, success is certain.
The finest pleasures of reading come unbidden. In the twilight alcove of a library, with a time-mellowed chair yielding luxuriously to your pressure, a June wind floating in at the windows, and in your hand some rambling old author, good humored and quaint, one would think the Spirit could scarce fail to be conjured. Yet often, after spending a morning hour restlessly there … I have strolled off with a book in my pocket to the woods; and, as I live, the mood has descended upon me under some chance tree, with a crooked root under my head, and I have lain there reading and sleeping by turns till the letters were blurred in the dimness of twilight.—From Prose Writings of N. P. Willis.