This Department is conducted in the interest of Girls and Young Women, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on the subject so far as possible. Correspondents should address Editor.
I heard of a society the other day, a society which has a beautiful name. I am sure you will agree with me about the name when I tell you that it is called "The Cheer and Comfort Society." Its object is to send good reading matter, particularly magazines, papers, and interesting books, to people too poor to obtain them by purchase, and not likely to get them from lending libraries, and the lady who can tell you all about the society and its work is Miss Emily Campbell, of Short Hills, New Jersey.
The sweet words "Cheer" and "Comfort" are repeating themselves in music in my mind as I write. Perhaps you would like to know where I am writing this Pudding Stick letter to you, dear girls. Well, the place is in the country, in a lovely valley with green hills rising around it on every side, and standing like guardian sentinels about the pleasant homes which are scattered over the breezy fields and plains beneath them. The morning is very cool, and the blue sky is just breaking through the heavy clouds which a while ago threatened rain. Wrapped in a shawl, think of it you who are reading this on a day too warm for shawls, and established in a big easy-chair, with my paper resting on a book in my lap, I am thinking of you. I write these little letters almost always in this way; they seem more intimate and confidential than if I sat down beside my desk, and shut my door, and put on a sort of let-me-alone-if-you-please business air. I fancy that most of the letters I receive from you are written in this same easy and friendly way, and that you keep your note-paper in little boxes and portfolios, and perhaps sometimes in a dear old atlas, which makes a delightful portfolio.
To go back to "Cheer" and "Comfort." There are always chances in life to do both, for turn where you will, there are those who are in need of help. Not always bodily help. Often those who have every earthly thing they need—shelter, money, food, clothing, books, all sorts of opportunities—are in want of the heavenly things which "cheer" and "comfort" mean. They are depressed, low in their spirits, sad, and troubled. They are even cross and disagreeable because they are unhappy. To such persons young people, with bright faces and light hearts, can bring both the cheer that gives courage and the comfort that takes away pain. You haven't to do anything in a grand and heroic fashion either. Simply be yourselves, and let the gladness that is in you bubble up and overflow, and you will make tired people happier.
Two school-girls sat behind me in a car the other day, chatting together in low voices, and laughing immoderately every few minutes at the happenings of their day. Bless them, the sweet, gay, merry-hearted creatures! The car seemed lonesome after they reached their station, and went tripping along the road up the long hill to their home out of sight from my point of view. Just be yourselves, dears, and you will make older people happy. I sent a loving little word of thanks after my school-girls, for they had been a help to me. If they read the Round Table, here's a bit meant for them.
One afternoon, passing a church on a city street, I read this announcement on a bulletin-board at the door, "The Pleasant Words Society will meet at four o'clock." Wasn't that fine? The "pleasant words" society! Whatever we think of, however we feel, we may speak pleasantly, our words and our tones being in our own control. The effort to speak pleasantly will usually cause us to feel pleasant, and it is pleasant people—people who please—who get together and form societies and clubs. Who ever heard of a Fault-finders Society or a Cross Words Society? Fretful fault-finders have to sit in corners alone.
Another society of which I know is the T.M.D.S., which, being interpreted, is the Ten Minutes a Day Society. This is an association of young girls which requires of its members only that they shall devote ten minutes every day, or sixty minutes every week, to sewing, or in some other way working for orphans and the poor. It sends garments to hospitals and asylums, boxes to home and foreign missions, and accomplishes a wonderful deal of good, by simply using ten minutes of each day in a bit of unselfish work.
