Page:The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble (1924).pdf/131

 "But what can I do?" Donato was apologetic. "I have no money. I have pawned my violin."

"You can work."

"My leg," he replied; "I am lame. No one would take me."

"You can get a job here," the social worker told him, scribbling the address of an employment bureau upon her card. "I'll see that you have a better pair of shoes," she added, noticing the condition of those he was wearing.

The effect of the interview was more instant than she had realized. Although she called early the next morning with the shoes, Donato had gone to the employment bureau in a pair of leather slippers—it was crisp winter weather—and had secured a job as a laborer, a place that he held for six months until it was possible for him to return to music as a vocation instead of as an introduction to alms.

There were several reasons for the social worker's success. In the first place, she acted from a well-founded knowledge of the man, obtained from his parents, his physician, and others who had tried to help him. It was this knowledge which made it possible for her to point the interview as she did. There is a vast amount of harm