V. ‘AT HOME’ TO THE POOR.[1]

V. ‘AT HOME’ TO THE POOR.[1]

Few people realise the extreme dulness of the lives of the poor. Cut off from the many interests which education or the possession of money gives, they have little left but the ‘trivial round, the common task,’ which indeed furnishes them with ‘room to deny themselves,’ but is hardly, in their case at least, ‘the road to bring them daily nearer God.’

‘People must be amuthed,’ is the caricatured statement of a true human need, and the terrible and often deplored attraction of the public-house has its root not so much in the love of strong drink as in the want of interest and desire for amusement felt by the lower classes of the poor. This is especially true with regard to the women and to those men who cannot read. Unable to comprehend the ever-living interest of watching public affairs, prevented by ignorance from following, even in outline, the actions of the nations, they are thrown back on the affairs of their neighbours, and centre all their interest in the sayings and doings of quarrelsome Mr. Jones or much-abused Mrs. Smith.

It is difficult for those of us to whom the world seems almost too full of interests to realise the deadening dulness of some of these lives. Let us imagine, for an instant, all knowledge of history, geography, art, science, and language blotted out; all interests in politics, social movements, and discoveries obliterated; no society pleasures to anticipate; no trials of skill nor tests of proficiency in work or play to look forward to; no money at command to enable us to plan some pleasure for a friend or dependent; no books always at hand, the old friends waiting silently till their acquaintance is renewed, the new ones standing ready to be learnt and loved; no opportunities of getting change of scene and idea; no memories laden with pleasures of travel; no objects of real beauty to look at. What would our lives become? And yet this is a true picture of the lives of thousands of the poorer classes, whose time is passed in hard, monotonous work, or occupied in the petty cares of many children, and in satisfying the sordid wants of the body. In some cases precarious labour adds the element of uncertainty to the other troubles, an element which, by the fact of its bringing some interest, is enjoyed by the men, but which adds tenfold to the many cares of the housewife.

It is not easy to see how the poor themselves can get out of this atmosphere of dulness. They can hardly give parties, even if the cost of entertaining were not a sufficient barrier; the extreme smallness of the rooms entirely prevents social intercourse, not to mention the hindrance caused by the necessity for putting the children to bed in the course of the evening, and by all the many discomforts consequent on the one room being bedroom, parlour, kitchen, and scullery. But even supposing there are two rooms, or few children, the difficulties of entertaining are not yet over. With minds so barren, conversation can hardly be the source of much amusement, and music and dancing are almost impossible with no instrument to help and no space where even the little feet can patter.

But it is possible for the ignorant as well as the cultured to enjoy Nature. And it is often a subject of wonder why the poor living in such close streets or alleys, surrounded with such unlovely objects, do not take more trouble to get out into the country or enjoy the parks. ‘Only sixpence, you say,’ said a hard-working pale body to me one day when I was urging her to go on one of her enforced idle afternoons to get air and see some refreshing beauty at Hampstead. ‘Well, yer see, I could hardly go without the three children, and that’s 1s. 3d.; besides they’d be a deal hungrier when they came home than perhaps I could manage for.’

What could be said to the last argument? Just fancy having to consider, otherwise than pleasurably, the increased appetite of one of our young ones fresh from a day by the sea or in the country?

But, apart from the money question, the desire to go into the country after a time wears off, even among those who have before lived in pure air and among country sights and scenes; people get used to their dull, sordid surroundings; the memory of fairer sights grows dim, and the imagination is not strong enough to conjure them up again.

‘Shure, I ain’t been in the country this fifteen year,’ an old woman once startled me by saying at a country party; ‘and if it hadn’t been for your note ’ere it would ha’ been another fifteen year afore I’d ha’ seen it.’

And she was not so poor, this old lady; 7s. a week, perhaps, and 2s. 6d. to pay for rent. It was not her poverty which prevented her seeing the fifteen fair springs which had passed since she came from the Green Isle. No! it was just the want of power to make the effort—a loss to her far more serious than the loss of the sight of the country. As the late James Hinton used to say, ‘The worst thing is to be in hell and not know it is hell’; perhaps the best thing one can do for another is to give him the glimpse of heaven, which, letting in the light, shows the blackness of hell.

‘Don’t you think green is God’s favourite colour?’ asked an old lady, the thought being suggested as we stood together in a forest of soft green. ‘Well, I can’t say,’ was the answer; ‘look at the sky; how blue that is.’ ‘Yes, but that isn’t always blue, and the earth is ’most always green.’

Does it not seem a pity that this old poet soul, so fit to teach God’s lessons, should live all through the summer days in one room, shared by four other people, seeing only the mud colours of London, which certainly are not God’s favourite colours. It was this same old lady who said on receiving her first invitation, ‘All the years I’ve lived in London I was never asked to go into the country before you asked me.’

But the want of pleasure and change is no newly discovered need of the poor. School-treats and excursions and bean-feasts have been organised and carried out almost since Sunday-schools have existed and congregations had a corporate life. Every summer sees the columns of the newspapers used to ask for money to give 900, 1,000, 2,000 children ‘one day in the country,’ and when the money is obtained and the day arrives, the children are packed into vans or a special train and turned into the woods or fields to enjoy themselves (and tease the frogs) until tea, buns, and hymns bring the ‘’appy day’ to an end. Good days these, full of pleasure and health-giving exercise, but perhaps mixed with too large an element of excitement to teach the children to enjoy the country for its own sake, to enable them to learn in Dame Nature’s lap ‘that we can feed this mind of ours in a wise passiveness.’

Neither have the clergy overlooked this need as existing among their grown people, and most of those working in poor neighbourhoods organise an annual ‘Treat,’ each person paying, say, 1s., to be met by the 6d. from the Pastor’s Fund. These treats sometimes assume the enormous proportions of 2,000 or 3,000 persons. All carry their mid-day meal to be eaten when and how they like. The assembling for tea and a few speeches by the rector and those in authority are the only means taken to bring the people together and to introduce the sense of host and guest. And with the memory of the 1s. paid, this sense is very difficult either to arouse or maintain. But, good as in many ways these treats are, they do not do all they might. They do not introduce fresh experiences, an acquaintance with other lives, the interest of new knowledge.

as Coleridge puts it; and such sadly empty minds want the interpretation of the friendly eye to make them see what they went out ‘for to see.’

Struck with these ideas, we determined to try another method of entertaining our neighbours; and believing that they had the same need of social intercourse as that felt by the rich, and taking for granted that the kind of country entertainment most prevalent among the rich was that most enjoyed, we based our parties on the same foundation, remembering always that the minds of the poor being emptier, more active entertainment was needed, and that the party to which we invited them was perhaps the one day’s outing in the whole year, the one glimpse that they had (apart from divorce suits) into the lives and habits of the richer classes.

On talking over our plan with friends who, living in the suburbs of London, had the necessary garden, it was not long before we received kindly invitations to take thirty, forty, fifty, of our neighbours to spend the afternoon in the country. The day and hour fixed, it was left with us to decide which guests should be invited, and to pass on the invitation. Sometimes our hosts particularly wish to entertain children as well as grown people; and if so, we include the children in the invitation; but on the whole, experience has taught that those parties are most thoroughly enjoyed from which the children are omitted. This will not be misunderstood when it is remembered that these mothers and fathers have their children, perhaps seven, all small together, constantly with them for 365 days in the year, both day and night; that the children become noisy and excited in the country, and that each child’s noise, though it may be music in the ear of its mother, can hardly be anything but what it is, disagreeable sounds, in the ears of its mother’s neighbour. Another objection to the presence of the children is the extreme difficulty of entertaining them and the grown people together. To the social gatherings of other classes it is not the rule to invite children with their parents, and the taste or feeling which forbids such a rule is common to the poor.

It is not difficult, knowing many people who would be glad of a day’s outing, to pass on such invitations; but it is pleasanter, if it can be so arranged, that the guests should beforehand be acquainted with each other. For that reason it is better to invite together the members of a mothers’ meeting and their husbands, the habitués of a club, the inhabitants of one block of buildings, the denizens of a particular court, the singing-class, the members of any society who worship, work, or learn together—in short, those who unite for any purpose.

There are other advantages in this plan besides the obvious one of the guests being already acquainted. Those who have hitherto seen each other’s character from the work point of view only now get another standpoint, and the day’s pleasure, together with the hearty laugh and the many-voiced songs, does more than many a pastoral address can do to teach forgiveness and break down barriers raised by quarrels—quarrels which more often owe their origin to close neighbourhoods than to bad tempers. ‘Now she ain’t such a bad ’un as one would think, considering the way she behaved to my Billy—is she now?’ is a true remark illustrating what I would say.

The guests chosen, the invitations go out in the usual form: ‘Mrs. So-and-So,’ mentioning our hostess’s name, ‘hopes to have the pleasure of seeing Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So on Monday, 14th, to spend the afternoon in the country,’ and then follow the time of the train and the name of the station where the rendezvous is to be held. Added to these the friends connected in any way with the expected guests, the district visitor, the superintendent of the mothers’ meeting, the lady rent-collector are also invited; as well as those who have gifts of entertaining or those to whom we wish to introduce our neighbours. A train is generally chosen between one and two o’clock, so as to enable the man to get a half-day’s work and the woman to see to necessary household duties and give the children their dinner before she starts.

On reaching the country station the party rambles through the lanes, picking grasses and flowers, taking, if possible, a détour before arriving at the host’s house. ‘Why, the trees smell,’ exclaimed one town-bred woman in almost awe-struck astonishment, standing under a lilac-tree. ‘Don’t it make one feel gentle-like!’ was another remark made more to himself than to anyone else, which came from a rough one-legged board-man, as he stood overlooking a quiet, far-stretching scene near Wimbledon.

Unless one has lived in close streets and amid noise and grinding hurry, it is difficult to understand the pleasures of these walks. The sweetness of the air, the quiet which can be felt, the very fact of strolling in the road without looking out to avoid being run over, are a relief, and the absence of the ever-present anxiety of the care of the children is a great addition to the irresponsible enjoyment of the day.

The destination reached, it is a great help if the host and hostess will come out to meet and welcome the party, as is customary towards guests of other classes. By this simple courtesy the tone is at once given, and the people feel themselves not brought out to a ‘treat’ but invited and welcomed as guests. I have seen men, among whom we were told when we first went to Whitechapel it was not ‘safe’ to go alone, entirely changed by the bearing of their hosts to them, and the determination with which they set out, to have a ‘lark,’ at whatever inconvenience to others, gradually melt away under the influence of being treated as gentlemen. ‘Why, she said she was glad to see me,’ said a low, coarse fellow, taking as a personal compliment to himself the conventional form of expression.

The duty of introducing and welcoming over, we are glad if we find tables on a shady lawn or under a tent ready spread and waiting for us. In the excitement of getting off, the midday meal taken hurriedly has probably been a slight one, and the walk and unwonted fresh air have given good appetites. Sometimes our hostess has made arrangements that all the party should take their food together, and this is the better plan if it can be managed. ‘Why, the gentry is sitting down with us. Now I do call that comfortable like,’ was overheard on one occasion when this arrangement had been followed. If the one class waits on the other it but emphasises the painful class distinctions so sadly prominent in the ordinary affairs of life, and the feeling aroused in the minds of the people as they see the richer members of the party taken by the hostess to the house to have ‘something to eat’ is not always amiable, the ‘something’ being interpreted as better, anyhow other than that provided for them, or why should it not have been taken together?

The repast given by our many kindly hosts during these eight summers of parties has been various. Some add eggs and bacon to the tea and cakes; others give a large joint, which is even more enjoyed, a cut off a good 14 lb. sirloin of beef being a rare luxury in the ordinary dietary of the working classes, while others again offer tea, differing only in quantity from the ordinary afternoon meal which is commonly taken between lunch and dinner. Some of our hosts give every variety of cake, such as Scotch housewives delight in making, though I remember one lady who, while most kind and anxious to give pleasure, told me, as if it were an additional advantage, that she had ‘had all the cakes made very plain, and that they were all baked the day before yesterday.’

The meal over, the real pleasure of the day begins, and this must entirely depend on the capabilities of the hostess for entertaining and on the possibilities of the garden. If it is large, there is nothing townpeople like better than to saunter about, to wander in the shrubberies, to see the hothouses, conservatories, ferneries, especially if some one will be the guide and point out what is interesting, this spot where the best view is to be obtained, that curious flower, and tell the story hanging on this queerly shaped tree. ‘Aye, aye, ma’am, it’s all very beautiful, but to my mind you’re the beautifullest flower of the lot,’ was the spontaneous compliment elicited from a weather-beaten costermonger to the stately old lady who had taken pains to show him her garden, and though the remark was greeted with shouts of laughter from the surrounding group, the ‘Well, he ain’t far wrong, I’m sure,’ showed that the words had only spoken out the thoughts of many.

Sometimes the men go off to play cricket or bowls, to see the puppies or horses, or some other beasts particularly interesting to the masculine mind; or perhaps the interminable game of rounders occupies all the time. Sometimes swings, see-saws, or a row on the pond are great amusements. ‘Oh dear, I think I’ve only just learnt to enjoy myself,’ gasped one buxom woman of fifty, breathless with swinging her neighbour, whose face told that her life’s holidays could without difficulty be counted; while, to a few, the fact of sitting still and looking out and feeling the quiet is pleasure enough. ‘I seem to see further than ever I saw before,’ murmured a pale young mother, sitting on the Upper Terrace at Hampstead, and as she said it she looked as if the sight of the country just then, when her eyes were reopened by her new motherhood, might, in another sense, make her see farther than she had ever seen before.

If the garden is small and its resources soon ended, games must be resorted to, and such games as ‘tersa,’ where running and motion are enjoyed; the ‘ring and the string,’ when eyes and ears must be on the alert; or ‘blow the candle blindfold’; all cause hearty fun, especially when the unconscious blindfold, having walked crookedly, energetically blows, as he thinks, at the candle, which is still burning steadily a yard or two from him. On some of these occasions the hostess has had her carriage out, and by taking four or five of the guests at a time all have been able to have a short drive, and see from a higher elevation something more of the country, ‘Well, I don’t know that I was ever in a carriage before,’ said one woman, who could hardly be said to have been in one then, as she dismounted from the box. ‘Except at funerals,’ corrected her neighbour. Might not some of the extraordinary liking, which is so common among the poor, for attending funerals be partly for the sake of the rare event of a drive? Occasionally it is possible to get up a dance, with the help of a fiddle or piano, and many a pale, worn face has lost, for the time at least, its stamp of weariness as it grew interested in the ups and downs of ‘Sir Roger de Coverley.’ ‘Bless me, if I ever thought to do any dancing, except the dancing of babbies,’ was an unexpected comment from my partner on one occasion; and many times have I since been referred to to confirm the fact that ‘You did see me dancing, didn’t you, ma’am?’

Besides these active pleasures, there is the enjoyment of music, the love and appreciation of which is so deep and warm in these uncultured minds; music which more than anything else helps to smooth away class as well as other inequalities. I have seen rough low-class men and women leave their active games or the swing for which they had been waiting and cluster round the singer or musician begging for another and yet ‘another bit.’ What they like best is a song with a chorus, or historical songs where they can hear the words, and next to these solemn music on a harmonium or organ; but any music charms them, and the hostess who is either musical herself or who invites her musical friends to help her finds the task of entertaining much easier. An oft-repeated mistake is that the poor like comic songs about themselves, and ‘Betsy Waring’ has been suggested and sung at our parties more often than I like to remember. A moment’s sympathetic thought will show, however, that the poor want other and wider interests, and it can hardly be the kindliest method of amusing them to sing them a song, the joke of which lies in imitations and ‘take-offs’ of their mispronunciation. It is, too, generally thought that the uneducated cannot appreciate what is commonly understood as ‘good music,’ but this, too, is a mistake. Long years ago I remember Mrs. Nassau Senior coming to a night-school of rough girls, held in a rough court. That evening some street row was more attractive than A B C, and our scholars were clustered around the heroine of the fight. I can still see the picture made by Mrs. Senior as she stood and sang in the doorway of the schoolroom, which opened directly on to the court, and among such surroundings it was a deep-sighted sympathy which led her to choose ‘Angels ever bright and fair.’ For long afterwards she was remembered as ‘the lady who came and sang about the angels, and looked like one herself.’

It is well if the hostess can bring her instrument to the window, so that the people can hear as they sit on the lawn outside and enjoy the air; perhaps she may find it possible to ask two or three of her guests who can sing, with strong, sweet, though untrained voices, to join her in a duet or glee, and helping, they enjoy the pleasure with the helper’s joy. Occasionally one of the party may have brought an accordion with which to aid the impromptu concert, or some one will recall the piece of poetry committed to memory long years ago, and then we have a recitation, which pleases none the less because it is ‘Jim Straw’s one bit,’ and has been heard a few times before. If it be wet or windy the hostess may ask her guests into the drawing-room. ‘You did not see the drawing-room, did you, mum?’ asked one of the guests after a party which I had been obliged to leave early; ‘it was lovely, and we all sat there quite friendly-like and listened to the music. I did like the look of that room.’ Very pregnant of influence are these introductions into a house scrupulously clean and tastily furnished—a house kept as the dwelling of every human being should be kept. Do we not know ourselves, if we go to visit a friend with a higher standard of art, morals, or culture, how subtle is the influence; how from such visits (albeit unconsciously, or at least hardly with deliberate resolve) is dated the turning towards the new light, the intention to be more perfect?

One lady, with the real feeling of hostess-ship, took her Whitechapel guests, as she would any others, into a bedroom to take their outdoor things off. Touching, if amusing, was the remark of a girl of fifteen or thereabouts who, turning to her mother, said, ‘Look, mother, here’s a bed with a room all to itself!’ ‘Has any one really slept in this white bed?’ was asked by another of that same party. While to others of a rather higher class, who have been servants before marriage, the reintroduction to such a house is a great pleasure, though to them not such a revelation as it is to those who have passed all their lives in factories or workshops. It is a welcome reminder of their past, and often suggests little improvements in the arrangement of their homes. It is a means also of diffusing a love of beauty, a sense of harmony, and an artistic taste, not to be despised among those who feel that the ‘Beauty of Holiness’ constitutes its attraction to the right living which leads to Righteousness.

In various ways, too many to describe, but which every hostess can devise, the hours between half-past four and eight can be pleasantly filled, until the drawing in of the long summer evening brings the party to a close. The announcement of supper is generally greeted with, ‘What, go home already?’ or, ‘The time don’t go so fast working days,’ but garden parties must necessarily end with daylight, and for folk up at six in the morning ten or eleven o’clock is a late enough bed hour. Supper is generally a small meal—cake, buns, or pastry, with lemonade, fruit, or cold coffee—simply a light refreshment taken standing; but some of the friends who entertain us like better to give the light meal on the arrival of the guests, and the more substantial one later. The first plan, though, is perhaps better, as the people leave their homes early, and many of them miss their dinner altogether, amid the necessary preparation for the long absence.

‘Good-night, sir, and God bless you for this day!’ was the farewell of one of his guests to his silver-haired host, words which struck him deeply. ‘Dear me, dear me! why did I never think of it before?’ he exclaimed; and really this means of doing good seems so simple and self-evident that it is to be wondered at that those working among the poor should often not know where to take their people for a day’s outing. London suburbs abound with families hardly one of whom does not give a garden party in the course of the summer, and yet how few of these parties are to guests ‘who cannot bid again!’ The expense of such a party is certainly not the reason of its rarity. An entertainment such as I have told about, even when meat is given, does not cost more than a shilling or eighteenpence a head. The trouble cannot be the deterrent motive, for that is nothing to be compared to the trouble of a dinner-party, nor even of any ordinary ‘at home.’ ‘The servants would not like it’ is sometimes urged as a reason, but it is certainly not the experience of those who, having overcome the objections of their servants, have tried it, and found that they entered thoroughly into the spirit of a party at which they had the pleasant duty of entertaining joined to their usual one of serving, and on more than one occasion the hearty welcome given by the servants has added much to the success of our day.

Perhaps, amid the many difficulties to which modern civilisation has brought us, one of the saddest is the mutual ignorance of the lives and minds of members of the same household—an ignorance often leading to division. It may not, I think, be the least important good of these parties that they afford a subject regarding which master and servants can be, anyhow for one day, of one mind and purpose.

Neither does it require the possession of a mansion or park before such an invitation can be sent; in fact, some of the pleasantest parties have been given in the smallest gardens, where kindliness and genial welcome have made up for want of space. One lady, indeed, who was staying for the summer in lodgings in the country gave happy afternoons and pleasant memories to more than eighty people. She asked them in little groups of twelve or fourteen, took them long country rambles, or obtained permission to saunter in a neighbour’s garden, and when the evenings drew in (it was in August) brought them back to her rooms, where a good tea-supper and a few songs brought the entertainment to a close.

The guests need not always be grown people. It is, perhaps, even more important to give the growing girl or the boy just entering into manhood a taste for simple pleasures. Very delightful is the interest and enjoyment of these young things in the country life and wonders. The evening sewing-class, consisting of big girls at work every day in factories; the Bible class of young men; the discussion club; the children-servants (so numerous and so joyless in our great cities)—such little groups can be found around every place of worship, or are known to every one living among or busying himself for the good of the poor. All are open to invitations, and these can be entertained even more easily than their elders. ‘Don’t you remember this or that?’ my young friends often ask about some trivial incident long since vanished from my memory, and when, demurring, I ask ‘When?’ the unfailing answer, varying in form but monotonous in substance, is ‘Why, that day when you took us into the country. You can’t forget. It was grand.’

Strangely ignorant are some of these town-bred folk of things which seem to us always to have been known and never to have been taught. They call every flower a rose, and express wonder at the commonest object. ‘Law! here’s straw a-growing!’ I once heard in a corn-field, and emerging into a fir-wood soon after, we all joined in a laugh at the remark, ‘Why, here’s hundreds of Christmas trees all together.’ Anything, provided it is joined to active movement, without which young things never seem quite happy, serves to amuse and to pass the time. A competition to see which girls shall gather the best nosegays, the proposal to the boys to search for some animal, queer plant, or odd stone, have helped to carry the guests over many miles and through long afternoons. Perhaps one of the nicest things which any young lady can do, even if she is not able or allowed to attempt the larger undertaking of a party, is to take some ten or twelve school boys and girls for a walk on their Saturday afternoon holiday. She need keep them, perhaps, only three or four hours, when milk or lemonade and buns, got at any milk-shop, will serve as a substitute for the usual tea.

But, besides these country parties which town-dwellers are quite unable to give, there is still left to us Londoners the possibility (not to say duty) of inviting the poor to our own houses. Our poor neighbours have not been asked to many such parties, but the few to which they have been bidden have been very pleasant. At one our hostess, but lately returned from the East, had arranged tableaux-vivants introducing Oriental costumes in her drawing-room, and the guests were delighted at seeing the people of the one foreign nation of which they knew anything—the Bible having been the literature which made them conversant with that—as large as life, and all ‘real men and solid women.’ Another time a little charade was got up, and proud was the mother whose baby was pressed into early service as a play-actor. Other friends have entertained us after a visit to the Kensington Museum or Zoological Gardens, while some evenings have been passed in much the same way as by other people who meet for social pleasure; with talk, music, strange foreign things, portfolios, and puzzles, though games may, perhaps, have occupied a somewhat longer time than is usual among guests with more conversational interests. To all of us have these parties given much pleasure—pleasure which is, in truth, healthful and refreshing amid the sorrow and pain so liberally mingled in the life’s cup of the poor. ‘This evening I’ve forgot all the winter’s troubles,’ followed the ‘Good-night’ from the lips of a pain-broken woman; and considering the ‘winter’s troubles’ included the death of a child and the semi-starvation resulting from the almost constant out-of-work condition of the husband, the party seemed a strangely inadequate means of producing even temporarily so large a result.

The efforts made to attend are one of the signs of how much these and the country parties are enjoyed. One woman came, with her puling, pink ten-days-old baby, and both men and women constantly get up from a sick-bed to return to it again as soon as the pleasure is over. ‘We can’t afford to lose it, yer see; they don’t come too often,’ is the sort of answer one usually receives in reply to remonstrance.

But this paper will accomplish its object if ‘they do come oftener,’ and if not only the poor of our big London, to whom we owe special duties, but if the poor of all great cities are more thought of in the light of guests.

The duty once recognised, the method becomes plain. Every one, even those whose work does not take them among the poor, can manage to be introduced to some who are leading pleasure-barren lives, and to employers of labour in factories or trades it is especially easy. The introduction made, the rest follows naturally, and though pleasure is in itself so great a good that I would hold the thing worth doing if this alone were obtained, yet I think a prophet’s eye is not needed to see the other possible good resulting from such gatherings. The wider interests, the seeds of culture, the introduction to simple recreations, the suggestion of ideal beauty, the possession of happy memories, the class relationships, are the advantages one can rapidly count off as accruing to the entertained, and as important are the gains of the entertainers. The rich, coming face to face with the poor, have seen patience which puts their restlessness to shame; endurance about which poems have yet to be written; hope which is deep and springing from the roots of their being; charity which never faileth, including, as it often does, the adoption of the orphan child or the sharing of the room with a lone woman, compared to which the biggest subscription is as nothing; kindliness which, though unthinking, spareth not itself. Each class has its virtues, but, as yet, they are unknown to each other. It is for the rich to take the first step towards knowing and being known; it is for them to say if the class hatreds, which like other ‘warfare comes from misunderstanding,’ shall exist in our midst. It is for them to make the way of friendship through the wall of gold now dividing the rich from the poor. It is for them to give fellowship which, crushing envy, takes the sting out of poverty. And all this can be done, by spending some thought, a little money, and some afternoons in being ‘At Home’ to the poor.

Great ends these to follow the small trouble and expense of a garden party. It will not, though, be the first time in history that good has been done by means which seemed contemptible, and it will not seem strange to those who have learnt that it is a Life and not a law, friendships and not organisations, which have taught the world its greatest lessons.

Henrietta O. Barnett.