Besides helping in true neighborly fashion, they brought many joys to the people about them. Some of these were quite by chance, as once when an old Italian woman cried with pleasure over a bunch of red roses that she saw at a reception Miss Addams gave. She was surprised, she said, that they had been “brought so fresh all the way from Italy.” No one could make her believe they had been grown in Chicago. She had lived there six years and never seen any, but in Italy they bloomed everywhere all summer.

Now the sad thing about this story was that during all the six years of her stay in Chicago she had lived within ten blocks of a flower store, and one car fare would have been enough to take her to one of Chicago’s beautiful public parks. No one had ever told her about them, and so all she knew of the city was the dirty street in which she lived.

Miss Addams learned that most of the foreigners were as helpless as this woman in finding anything to bring them pleasure. So Hull House became a place where hundreds of persons went. Some joined classes 151 and studied, but at first it was for social purposes that the Settlement was used the most.

The people lived in tiny, crowded rooms and the only place they had to gather in celebration of weddings and birthdays, and meet each other was the saloon halls. These halls could be rented for a very small sum with the understanding that the company would spend much money at the saloon bar. Because of this custom many a party that started out quiet and orderly ended with great disorder. So you can see that every one would be glad to have Hull House where they could go and enjoy themselves comfortably with their friends.

A day at Hull House is most interesting. In the morning come many little children to the Kindergarten. They are followed by older children who come to afternoon classes, while in the evening every room is filled with grown persons who meet in some form of study, club or social life.

But if you should go there now you would find instead of one building, with which Miss Addams began, thirteen buildings and forty persons living there to help to teach anyone who may come to Hull House.

There are classes in foreign languages, and one may study in the night classes almost any subject that is taught in a high school. Besides these classes there are concerts and plays. Hull House has a theater of its own, and the boys and girls of the neighborhood act out their favorite dramas there. One story that has been 152 told frequently shows the kind of plays the boys and girls make. Almost every one thinks this play was given in the Hull House Theater but Miss Addams writes:

I have told the story you have reference to several times. It is about a settlement boys’ club, not at Hull House, who were asked to write a play on the origin of the American flag. They were told the climax must come in the third act, etc., but were given no outline.

The play was as follows: The first act was at “the darkest hour of the American Revolution.” A sentry walking up and down in front of the camp, says to a soldier: “Aint it fierce? We aint got no flag for this here Revolution.” And the soldier replies: “Yes, aint it fierce?” That is the end of the first act. Second act: The same soldier appears before George Washington and says: “Aint it fierce? We aint got no flag for this here Revolution.” And George Washington replies: “Yes, aint it fierce?” and that is the end of the second act. Third Act: George Washington went to call on Betsy Ross, who lived on Arch Street in Philadelphia, and said: “Mistress Ross, aint it fierce? We aint got no flag for this here Revolution,” and Betsy Ross replied: “Yes, aint it fierce? Hold the baby and I will make one.”

I sometimes tell this with a little more elaboration but I have given you what the boys actually wrote. Of course, it has always been detailed in the line of a funny story and cannot be taken too seriously.

Very sincerely yours,
JANE ADDAMS

Is it not wonderful what Miss Addams has done for the people who had no comfort or care? Perhaps she has but kept a promise she made to her father when she was only seven years of age.

They were driving through the poor, mean streets of her native town of Cedarville, Illinois. She had never seen this particular part of the town before, and 153 asked her father many times why persons lived in such dreadful places. He tried to tell her what it meant to be very poor. She listened eagerly and then exclaimed, “When I grow up, I am going to live in a great, big house right among horrid little houses like these.”