Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/648

 632 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

always it is the place where the crowded children may breathe and run and shout in safety. Away down toward the southeast and off to the northwest are large study clubs of young men and women whose literary life began under the roof of the house and who have outgrown her first care.

The public-library reading room on Blue Island avenue, the public baths a few blocks away, the popular lectures now being given in one of the public schools were initiated by the settle- ment. The decoration of public schoolrooms, which is so novel and lovely a thing, is now carried on by the Society of Art in Schools, of which Miss Starr was the founder and of which she is president.

And somewhere about, as one might say within calling dis- tance, in little rooms at least warm and clean and rent free, are a dozen elderly women, for whom through one of its residents the house has laid forever the specter of the county poorhouse. Some, it is .true, came to curse but remained to pray, and all preserve the freedom of the beneficiary relation by generous criticism or approval.

The day begins early with the paper carrier, who hides his impartial list of daily papers under the mat for safety. He meets the earliest working mother or possibly father who is bringing the baby to the creche, where an average of twenty-five little ones are cared for every day. This means spending the day under wise supervision, with pictures and toys ; it means bread and milk eaten at a tiny table in company ; it means the neatness of a bath and the sweetness of a nap in a little white bed all to oneself; it means the big porch playground with bright red geraniums on its border, and an exciting squirrel and a placable parrot at the ends. So may these good hours of the waking day make all the others but a sleep and a forget- ting.

Below the creche is a larger room where the elder babies may play at serious kindergarten, alleviated by a sand-pile and a monstrous doll's house, and still above is the larger room for the older class.