The Lad bent down and kissed it.
CHAPTER IX
My fellow-philanthropists talked much of the “Settlement Idea.” Its adherents maintained that the world had not yet seen any self-sacrifice so beautiful as this attempt to share the lives of the poor by living among them. On the other hand, members of old, thoroughly organized, comfortable societies for doing good pronounced the new methods extremely vague.
I wished to see for myself.
Before I had visited Barnet House, the settlement of university men in Brand Street, a similar house was opened by young college women in the West End.
The Altruist went with me to Barnet House on Wednesday afternoon, when the residents always had a musicale or a reading for their friends in the neighbourhood. As we drew near the house and saw the white curtains and green plants in the window, shining out from among the dirt-begrimed tenements, I said to myself (my mood being severe) that it looked pretty, but sentimental. I tried to remember who had called this kind of effort to elevate the slums “a philanthropic picnic in a wilderness of sin.”
We were ushered by a tall young man into a great sunshiny room that was full of easy chairs and books and pictures.
This was one of the residents, the Altruist said in introducing him. He would doubtless be kind enough to tell me what I wished to know.
“The Settlement Idea is very simple,” said the Resident, in answer to my questions. He spoke with an air of dignity that seemed too old for him. “A number of people who wish to help the poor find a house, put it into good sanitary condition, and go to live there together, doing some independent work, and some work in common.”
“But what kind of work?” I asked. “Pardon me,—I can understand why you come, but not what you do when you get here.”