The children sent out by the Fresh Air Fund go as guests always. No penny of it is spent in paying for board. It goes toward paying their way only. Most of the railroad companies charge only one-fourth of the regular fare for the little picnickers up to the maximum of $3.50; beyond that they carry them without increase within the five hundred mile limit. Last year Mr. Parsons’ wards were scattered over the country from the White Mountains in the East to Western Pennsylvania, from the lakes to West Virginia. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia were hosts, and Canada entertained one large party. Ohio and North Carolina were on the list of entertainers, but the way was too long for the children. The largest party that went out comprised eleven hundred little summer boarders.
Does any good result to the children? The physical effect may be summed up in Dr. Daniel’s terse statement, after many years of practical interest in the work: “I believe the Fresh Air Fund is the best plaster we have for the unjust social condition of the people.” She spoke as a doctor, familiar with the appearance of the children when they went out and when they came back. There are not wanting professional opinions showing most remarkable cures to have resulted from even this brief respite from the slum. The explanation is simple: it was the slum that was the real complaint; with it the cause was removed and improvement came with a bound. As to the moral and educational effect, Mr. Parsons thus answers a clergyman who objected that “it will only make the child discontented with the surroundings where God placed him:”
“I contend that a great gain has been made if you can only succeed in making the tenement-house child thoroughly discontented with his lot. There is some hope then of his getting out of it and rising to a higher plane. The new life he sees in the country, the contact with good people, not at arm’s length, but in their homes; not at the dinner, feast, or entertainment given to him while the giver stands by and looks down to see how he enjoys it, and remarks on his forlorn appearance; but brought into the family and given a seat at the table, where, as one boy wrote home, ‘I can have two pieces of pie if I want, and nobody says nothing if I take three pieces of cake;’ or, as a little girl reported, where ‘We have lots to eat, and so much to eat that we could not tell you how much we get to eat.’
“This is quite a different kind of service, and has resulted in the complete transformation of many a child. It has gone back to its wretchedness, to be sure, but in hundreds of instances about which I have personally known, it has returned with head and heart full of new ways, new ideas of decent living, and has successfully taught the shiftless parents the better way.”
The host’s side of it is presented by a pastor in Northern New York, whose people had entertained a hundred children: “They have left a rich blessing behind them,” he wrote, “and they actually gave more than they received. They have touched the hearts of the people and opened the fountains of love, sympathy, and charity. The people have read about the importance of benevolence, and have heard many sermons on the beauty of charity; but these have been quickly forgotten. The children have been an object-lesson that will long live in their hearts and minds.”
Not least among the blessings of the Fresh Air work has been the drawing closer in a common interest and sympathy of the classes that are drifting farther and farther apart so fast, as wealth and poverty both increase with the growth of our great cities. Each year the invitations to the children have come in greater numbers. Each year the fund has grown larger, and as yet no collector has ever been needed or employed. “I can recall no community,” says Mr. Parsons, “where hospitality has been given once, but that some children have been invited back the following years.” In at least one instance of which he tells, the farmer’s family that nursed a poor consumptive girl back to health and strength did entertain an angel unawares. They were poor themselves in their way, straining every nerve to save enough to pay interest on a mortgage and thus avert the sale of their farm. A wealthy and philanthropic lady, who became interested in the girl after her return from her six weeks’ vacation, heard the story of their struggle and saved the farm in the eleventh hour.
What sort of a gap the Fund sometimes bridges over the following instance from its report for 1891 gives a feeble idea of: “Something less than a year ago a boy from this family fell out of an upper-story window and was killed. Later on, a daughter in the same family likewise fell out of a window, sustaining severe injuries, but she is still alive. About this same time a baby came and the father had to quit work and stay at home to see that all was well with the mother. By the time she was well, the father was stricken down with a fever. On his recovery he went to hunt another job. On the first day at work a brick fell off a scaffold and fractured his skull. That night the Tribune Fresh Air Fund came to the rescue and relieved the almost distracted mother by sending four of her children to the country for two weeks. The little ones made so many good friends that the family is now well provided for.”
From Mr. Parsons’ record of “cases” that have multiplied in fifteen years until they would fill more than one stout volume, this one is taken as a specimen brick:
In the earlier days of the work a bright boy of ten was one of a company invited to Schoharie County, N. Y. He endeared himself so thoroughly to his entertainers, who “live in a white house with green blinds and Christmas-trees all around it,” that they asked and received permission to keep the lad permanently. The following is an exact copy of a part of the letter he wrote home after he had been for a few months in his new home:
Dear mother: i am still to Mrs. D—— and i was so Busy that i Could not Write Sooner i drive the horses and put up the Cows and clean out the Cow Stable i am all well i pick stones and i have an apple tree 6 Feet High and i have got a pair of new pants and a new Coat and a pair of Suspenders and Mr. D—— is getting a pair of New Boots made for me We killed one pig and one Cow i am going to plow a little piece of land and plant Some Corn. When Mr. D—— killed the Cow i helped and Mr. D——had to take the Cow skin to be taned to make leather and Mr. D—— gave the man Cow skin for leather to make me Boots i am going to school to-morrow and I want to tell lizzie—pauline—Charlie—Christie—maggie—george and you to all write to me and if they all do when Christmas Comes i will send all of you something nice if my uncle frank comes to see yous you must tell him to write to me i Close my letter