That ticks had to be washed and straw burned after the occupation of many of them, made no apparent difference, and even to-day, when it is all an old story, and board must in many cases be paid, there is unfailing consideration for the tastes and whims of the strangers. Now and then there was fright and tears and long wails for mother, soon quieted. Now and then rebellion and ingratitude; sometimes lying and petty thefts, but all yielding to kindness.
In Philadelphia, to whose markets the farmers for miles about come in, the children were in many cases able to keep up their acquaintance, and were often found behind the stalls, in long talks with the friends who now and then bundled them into the great Conestoga wagons and gave them an unexpected country week. The work has grown at this point, as in New York, beyond any expectation, and rooms and officers have both become necessary, the modest reports giving small hint of the patient labor bestowed. The work was long confined solely to children, with now and then a worn-out mother smuggled in, but the same eyes that had seen their needs were studying now into possibilities for the class just above them—the working girls. Of all grades, from factory to store, all were living on the least sum on which body and soul could be kept together, and all needed quite as strenuously as the children, the change from narrow, stifling homes to country air and sights. To accomplish this has been far more difficult than the first undertaking, but has resulted in a success quite as complete. The objections were natural. Children could be disciplined and taught even in a week’s stay, but growing or grown girls, probably pert, self-sufficient and generally unpleasant, were quite another matter. It was impossible to say what airs they might not put on, or what demands they might make, and quiet housewives turned in dismay from even the thought of such inmates. The same woman who had decided that her own children should be temporarily tied up rather than to stand in the way of more needy ones, opened her doors again, not as a charity, but on the lowest terms that could well be fixed, and half a dozen girls came to her for a fortnight, each paying two dollars per week, and finding such interest on the investment as no dollars of their earning had ever known before. The girls were gentle, quiet, over-worked and timid, and so far from putting on airs, required all the assurances that could be given to make them willing to take the good before them. Other doors opened at once, and the neighborhood soon found even more interest in this phase than had attended work for the children. Girls in many cases clubbed together, and it has been found, wherever attempted, that three dollars per week for board and washing still leaves a margin of profit for the entertainers. Home after home has sprung up by the seashore or in the country proper; but the same objection applies to massing girls together that has already been mentioned as affecting the children. Numbers seem always to include inevitable demoralization, and to develop unpleasant possibilities in even the most inoffensive, and the conclusion is the same for both, that the best results follow where private families open their doors and the workings of home life can be part of the vacation experience. Hints have come in silent ways stronger than any words, that have borne fruit in many lives. A new sense has been born—a sense of the beauty of order and many a quiet virtue unknown to the crowded and scrambling city life, and the lesson has as yet reached but the alphabet.
It is not the intention of this article to describe any one work at length, or to define more than the possibilities before us all. More and more we have come to recognize that only in dealing directly with the individual, can any efficient work be done, and this principle now underlies the best that the Associated Charities has given us. Summer rest is but a phase of the wide-reaching work, but not one holds a larger significance. Two or three years ago the writer recorded one case, which, while hardly typical, still shows what may lie in wait for the young soul of whose possibilities we can never judge in full, and the story is given again, as the best illustration of what a country week may mean.
Long ago in a dull, old street, making part of an equally dull and colorless part of old New York, a very solitary child extracted such amusement from life as forty feet of back yard could afford. He sat in his small rocking-chair and listened to the talk about him, growing a little paler, a little more uncanny all the time, till one day when a country cousin appeared, and, horrified that anything so old and weazened could call itself a boy, begged that he might go home with her.
There was infinite objection, but her point was finally carried, and the child found himself suddenly in a country village, a great garden about the house, a family dog and cat, a cow, an old horse, and all the belongings of village life. Old-fashioned flowers were all about, and the old-fashioned boy sat down in the path by a bed of spice pinks and looked at them, his hands folded and a species of adoration on his face.
“Pick some,” said the cousin; “pick as many as you want.”
“Pick them?” repeated the old-fashioned boy. “I’m afraid to. Ain’t they God’s?”
An hour later the seven years’ crust had broken once for all, and the child, who had to be put to bed exhausted from his scrambles through and over every unaccustomed thing, began to live the first day of real child life. When the time came for his return he begged with such a passion of eagerness, such storm of sobs and cries for longer stay that the unwilling aunt and grandmother left him there, and finding the transformation, when he did return, beyond either comprehension or management, sent him back to the life he craved.
To-day he takes rank among American painters, though only heaven knows how the possibility of such development found place in this strange off-shoot of a Philistine race. But he counts his own birthday from the hour when the first sense of sky and grass and flowers dawned upon him, and he looked upon the garden that he thought truly God had planted.
Such revelation is the portion of few, but for all it comes in degree. To aid such revelation is hardly a charity. Is it not rather self-protection? Men and women in the slums are beyond much power of ours for reconstruction or reformation, but the children can be influenced still. And so let every one who looks with apprehension at the daily criminal record, and wonders what should be done, remember that a very small sum will be one means of giving a chance to some child born to all evil, whose first sense of something better will come, not through school or mission, but through the silent teaching unconsciously working in them, through every breath of fresh air, every sight of blue sky and sunshine, and green grass and trees. A “country week” may come from a very small sum, but it is an investment on which interest is unending, and whoever has once made it will find that the pleasure is not for the child alone, and that life opens up more possibilities than had come even to one’s deepest dreams.