Some good people who visit the Settlement in a patronizing mood are surprised to discover that many of "these working-girls" have a taste for what is fine. Miss Addams likes to tell them about the intelligent group who followed the reading of George Eliot's "Romola" with unflagging interest.
"The club was held in our dining-room," she said to one incredulous visitor, "and two of the girls came early regularly to help wash the dishes and arrange the photographs of Florence on the table. Do you know," she added, looking her prosperous guest quietly in the eyes, "that the young woman of whom you were inquiring about 'these people' is one of our neighborhood girls? Those who live in these dingy streets because they are poor and must live near their work are not a different order of beings. Don't forget what Lincoln said, 'God must love the common people—He made so many of them.' You have only to live at Hull-House a while to learn how true it is that God loves them."
"Nothing has ever meant more real inspiration to me," said a student of sociology from the university, who had spent a year in the Settlement, "than the way the poor help each other. A woman who supports three children by scrubbing will share her breakfast with the people in the next tenement because she has heard that they are 'hard up'; a man who has been out of work has a month's rent paid by a young chap in the stock-yards who boarded with him last year; a Swedish girl works in the laundry for her German neighbor to let her stay home with her sick baby—and so it goes."
"Our people have, too, many other hardships besides the frequent lack of food and fuel," said Miss Addams. "There are other hungers. Do you know what it means for the Italian peasant, used to an outdoor life in a sunny, easy-going land, to adapt himself to the ways of America? It is a very dark, shut-in Chicago that many of them know. At one of the receptions here an Italian woman who was delighted with our red roses was also surprised that they could be 'brought so fresh all the way from Italy.' She would not believe that roses grew in Chicago, because she had lived here six years and had never seen any. One always saw roses in Italy. Think of it! She had lived for six years within ten blocks of florists' shops, but had never seen one!"
"Yes," said Miss Starr, "they lose the beauties and joys of their old homes before they learn what the new can give. When we had our first art exhibit, an Italian said that he didn't know that Americans cared for anything but dollars—that looking at pictures was something people did only in Italy."
A Greek was overjoyed at seeing a photograph of the Acropolis at Hull-House. He said that before he came to America he had prepared a book of pictures in color of Athens, because he thought that people in the new country would like to see them. At his stand near a big railroad-station he had tried to talk to some of those who stopped to buy about "the glory that was Greece," but he had concluded that Americans cared for nothing but fruit and the correct change!
At Hull-House the Greeks, Italians, Poles, and Germans not only find pictures which quicken early memories and affections, but they can give plays of their own country and people. The "Ajax" and "Electra" of Sophocles have been presented by Greeks, who felt that they were showing ignorant Americans the majesty of the classic drama. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other holidays are celebrated by plays and pageants. Nor are the great days of other lands forgotten. Garibaldi and Mazzini, who fought for liberty in Italy, are honored with Washington and Lincoln.
Old and young alike take part in the dramatic events. A blind patriarch, who appeared in Longfellow's "Golden Legend," which was presented one Christmas, spoke to Miss Addams of his great joy in the work.
"Kind Heart," he said (that was his name for her),—"Kind Heart, it seems to me that I have been waiting all my life to hear some of these things said. I am glad we had so many performances, for I think I can remember them to the end. It is getting very hard for me to listen to reading, but the different voices and all made this very plain."
The music classes and choruses give much joy to the people, and here it seems possible to bring together in a common feeling those widely separated by tradition and custom. Music is the universal language of the heart. Bohemian and Polish women sing their tender and stirring folk-songs. The voices of men and women of many lands mingle in Schubert's lovely melodies and in the mighty choruses of Handel.