And it happened at Hale House.
It was not Dr. Hale, though it might have been, who showed me the way to the settlement house on Garland Street which bears his name. Hale House is situated in the midst of the labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys that constitutes the slum of which Harrison Avenue is the backbone, and of which Dover Street is a member.
Bearing in mind the fact that there are almost no playgrounds in all this congested district, you will understand that Hale House has plenty of work on its hands to carry a little sunshine into the grimy tenement homes. The beautiful story of how that is done cannot be told here, but what Hale House did for me I may not omit to mention.
It was my brother Joseph who discovered Hale House. He started a debating club, and invited his chums to help him settle the problems of the Republic on Sunday afternoon. The club held its first session in our empty parlor on Dover Street, and the United States Government was in a fair way to be put on a sound basis at last, when the numerous babies belonging to our establishment broke up the meeting, leaving the Administration in suspense as to its future course.
The next meeting was held in Isaac Maslinsky's parlor, and the orators were beginning to jump to their feet and shake their fists at each other, in excellent parliamentary form, when Mrs. Maslinsky sallied in, to smile at the boys' excitement. But at the sight of seven pairs of boys' boots scuffling on her cherished parlor carpet, the fringed cover of the centre table hanging by one corner, and the plush photograph album unceremoniously laid aside, indignation took the place of good humor in Mrs. Maslinsky's ample bosom, and she ordered the boys to clear out, threatening "Ike" with dire vengeance if ever again he ventured to enter the parlor with ungentle purpose.
On the following Sunday Harry Rubinstein offered the club the hospitality of his parlor, and the meeting began satisfactorily. The subject on the table was the Tariff, and the pros and antis were about evenly divided. Congress might safely have taken a nap, with the Hub Debating Club to handle its affairs, if Harry Rubinstein's big brother Jake had not interfered. He came out of the kitchen, where he had been stuffing the baby with peanuts, and stood in the doorway of the parlor and winked at the dignified chairman. The chairman turned his back on him, whereupon Jake pelted him with peanut shells. He mocked the speakers, and called them "kids," and wanted to know how they could tell the Tariff from a sunstroke, anyhow. "We've got to have free trade," he mocked. "Pa, listen to the kids! 'In the interests of the American laborer.' Hoo-ray! Listen to the kids, pa!"
Flesh and blood could not bear this. The political reformers adjourned indefinitely, and the club was in danger of extinction for want of a sheltering roof, when one of the members discovered that Hale House, on Garland Street, was waiting to welcome the club.
How the debating-club prospered in the genial atmosphere of the settlement house; how from a little club it grew to be a big club, as the little boys became young men; how Joseph and Isaac and Harry and the rest won prizes in public debates; how they came to be a part of the multiple influence for good that issues from Garland Street—all this is a piece of the history of Hale House, whose business in the slums is to mould the restless children on the street corners into noble men and women. I brought the debating-club into my story just to show how naturally the children of the slums drift toward their salvation, if only some island of safety lies in the course of their innocent activities. Not a child in the slums is born to be lost. They are all born to be saved, and the raft that carries them unharmed through the perilous torrent of tenement life is the child's unconscious aspiration for the best. But there must be lighthouses to guide him midstream.
Dora followed Joseph to Hale House, joining a club for little girls which has since become famous in the Hale House district. The leader of this club, under pretence of teaching the little girls the proper way to sweep and make beds, artfully teaches them how to beautify a tenement home by means of noble living.
Joseph and Dora were so enthusiastic about Hale House that I had to go over and see what it was all about. And I found the Natural History Club.