r wages upon the nurture and education of their
children, reserving for themselves but the shabbiest clothing and a
crowded place at the family table.

"Bad weather for you to be out in," you remark on a February evening,
as you meet rheumatic Mr. S. hobbling home through the freezing sleet
without an overcoat. "Yes, it is bad," he assents: "but I've walked to
work all this last year. We've sent the oldest boy back to high
school, you know," and he moves on with no thought that he is doing
other than fulfilling the ordinary lot of the ordinary man.

These are the familiar and the constant manifestations of family
affection which are so intimate a part of life that we scarcely
observe them.

In addition to these we find peculiar manifestations of family
devotion exemplifying that touching affection which rises to unusual
sacrifice because it is close to pity and feebleness. "My cousin and
his family had to go back to Italy. He got to Ellis Island with his
wife and five children, but they wouldn't let in the feeble-minded
boy, so of course they all went back with him. My cousin was fearful
disappointed."

Or, "These are the five children of my brother. He and his wife, my
father and mother, were all done for in the bad time at Kishinef. It's
up to me all right to take care of the kids, and I'd no more go back
on them than I would on my own." Or, again: "Yes, I have seven
children of my own. My husband died when Tim was born. The other three
children belong to my sister, who died the year after my husband. I
get on pretty well. I scrub in a factory every night from six to
twelve, and I go out washing four days a week. So far the children
have all gone through the eighth grade before they quit school," she
concludes, beaming with pride and joy.

That wonderful devotion to the child seems at times, in the midst of
our stupid social and industrial arrangements, all that keeps society
human, the touch of nature which unites it, as it was that same
devotion which first lifted it out of the swamp of bestiality. The
devotion to the child is "the inevitable conclusion of the two
premises of the practical syllogism, the devotion of man to woman."
It is, of course, this tremendous force which makes possible the
family, that bond which holds society together and blends the
experience of generations into a continuous story. The family has been
called "the fountain of morality," "the source of law," "the necessary
prelude to the