dreary houses of the period. For those were the days of
heavy, soft coal smoke, of a yellow, unpurified water supply, and
a lack of adequate housing or health laws. The consequences were
that a large parish like ours always had typhoid or T. B. folk
needing material help as well as sympathy and compassion. The
annals of such a parish always contain numberless "human interest
stories." There was a very large family which never was able to
provide shoes or to have quite enough clothing for six children.
We suspected that, despite all efforts, sufficient food was
lacking, and especially at those times when the head of the
family was on one of his happy-go-lucky sprees. Everyone on the
staff felt a sense of relief when this bibulous father died for
there was enough insurance money not only to bury him, but to
leave funds to tide the family over the next few months, and
until the mother and her two eldest children had found jobs.
Imagine our feelings when, in less than two weeks after the
funeral, the widow appeared at the parish house! She had come to
ask Christ Church for a little help until she had work. "But what
has become of your insurance money, surely you have not used it
all up so soon?" "Oh! yes we have, deaconess! You see we always
craved gold band rings for the children, and I always doted on
having a pink enamel bed." It was really true! The bed that they
had longed for stood in their shabby front room, pink enamel,
gold curlicue trimmings and all! Its enormous expanse was covered
with tawdry silk pillows and silk spread, and it stood out, the
one glorious object in the whole tenement. Also the children with
the utmost pride showed their gold band rings which according to
the custom of those days each wore on the "wedding finger"; even
the five year old displayed his golden trophy. Mr. Nelson did his
best to modify the protests of his outraged staff. Finally we did
see at least something of his point of view, that to the family
these symbols of respectability meant what a Persian rug would
have meant in a more sophisticated family. For these friends of
ours had "arrived," socially speaking, via the pink enamel bed,
and their admiring neighbors could never again refer to them as
"poor white trash." It takes a long, long time to change ideas,
but the Rector's respect for human personality (foolishness and
stupidity notwithstanding) and his