The fact that this head is a nurse has made our social worker the confidant of many families to which another outsider would find but a coolly polite welcome. The fact that she is a social worker makes her interest in her cases widen to their families and remain after her professional duties are no longer needed. Being the head of the house, she can dictate as to the time of meals and the activities of the house for the good of the infirmary patients, yet being the social worker, the interest of the clubs and classes in the house are not needlessly sacrificed to the whims of her patients. Her training as a nurse and her experience has made her more executive than the ordinary young social worker, but her authority as head of a house of so many interests and as executive for so active and powerful an association, gives her prestige, and with that prestige a power for self-development which utilizes the best qualities she possesses. Moreover, in a country district such as our valley, where sickness is the exception, a nurse who was confined to her profession would have much idle time on her hands, and a social worker who was solely a social worker might be discouraged as to the slowness of the growth of her ideals in the minds of those about her. For where people live twenty-five miles from the railroad, tomorrow is always as good as today for beginning a new work. The women are, to say the least, conservative, and the girls are shy about showing enthusiasm for a new idea. The audiences for lectures arrive with sublime dilatoriness, and the boys stay outside until they are quite sure that what is going on inside is a roaring success.
Of course, the head of the house has a comprehending executive committee behind her. Of course, too, each department of the Neighborhood House, infirmary, summer school, exchange, clubs, etc., has its own committee and chairman. Her responsibilities, also, are only those of a trusted agent and all her reports are filed for the benefit of the Association, so that while each department depends practically upon her, she in her turn depends upon each committee and upon the executive committee and above all upon the able president of that committee for her inspiration and encouragement in carrying out her share of the usefulness of the house. All these good things did not come the first night the house was open. They are fruits of a happy growth. There have been many minor difficulties and prejudices and some evils to overcome. The prejudices died easiest, one of them, the fear that Neighborhood House provided for needs that did not exist, went most quickly of all.
Last summer when an army officer from West Point lay convalescing in one room, sharing his nurse with a little blind pauper baby, there was no doubt as to the need of an infirmary for rich and poor. When the exchange, which sold impartially the rag rug made by a guide's wife, the oil painting of an artist, and the home-made candy of a school child, and turned in $500 profits to its members, there was no doubt as to the democratic practicability of the exchange. When the women came from the Adirondack Club, and from the summer cottages to debate with the women of the village on domestic science, there was no question as to the success of the Woman's Club. And when the women of the church sewing society came to count their gains from the country supper, and the village Glee Club met to rehearse for its great concert, and the boys invited the girls to their birthday suppers and the girls invited the boys to their dancing classes, and the young married people of the village invited last year's debutantes of far away cities to teach them new figures and steps, and the clergymen who supplied the village church and the lecturers sent by the government to answer the farmers' questions about agriculture, all shared the hospitality of the house, there remained no doubt in any one's mind as to its great usefulness to the entire community.
As to whether it has made neighbors of us all in the spiritual sense—as loving one another as we love ourselves—that has not become noticeable to a degree which has affected the price of eggs! And yet I noticed with a pleasant thrill at my heart last summer that when a woman, quite two miles away from my cottage, came down from her porch with a loaf of bread which she insisted upon my taking as a gift from her baking because she knew the bakery was shut and that I was in a sudden stress, she called me: "Neighbor!" "For goodness' sake!" said she. "Don't you dare to pay me. You'd do the same for me, I just guess! Aren't we neighbors?"
Yes, surely we are neighbors—we city folk and country folk! But it took the Neighborhood House to teach us as a community the beginnings of the art of neighborliness.
THE NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE IN WINTER
[A NEW MINISTER TO MINDS DISEASED]
MICHAEL M. DAVIS, Jr.