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of the unique ideas accompanying the scheme.

A Methodist brother across the river said confidentially to a friend
that he was going to launch on the community "a legitimate
sensation"--a boys' choir. My plans for getting the poor people to
church succeeded. Such a thing as fraternizing the steady goers--goers
by habit and heredity--and the unsteady goers--goers by the need of
the soul--was impossible. The most surprising thing in these evening
meetings to the men who financed the church was the fact that these
poor people paid for their own extras. That goes a long way in church
affairs.

The weekly children's meeting I called "The Pleasant Hour." Believing
that the most important work of the Church is the teaching of the
children, it was my custom for many years in many churches to
personally conduct a Sunday School on a week day so that the best I
had to give would be given to the children. In my larger work for the
city two ideas governed my action. One was to get the church people
interested in civic problems and the other was to solve civic problems
or to attempt a solution whether church people were interested in them
or not.

I organized a flower mission for the summer months. We called it a
Flower House. An abandoned hotel was cleaned up. A few loads of sand
dumped in the back yard as a sort of extemporized seashore where
little children might play. Flowers were solicited and distributed to
the folks who had neither taste nor room for flowers. We did some
teaching, too, and gave entertainments. A barrel-organ played on
certain days by the sand pile; and that music of the proletariat never
fails to attract a crowd.

The flower mission developed into a social settlement. We called it
Lowell House. At first the church financed it, then it got tired of
that, and when I incorporated the settlement work in my church reports
in order to stimulate support, the settlement workers--directors
rather--got tired of the church and went into a spasm over it. Lowell
House is accounted a successful institution of the city now. It is
doing a successful church work among the poor--church work with this
exception, that its head worker--its educated, sympathetic
priestess--lives there and shares her little artistic centre with the
crowd who live in places not good enough for domestic animals.

In 1898 New Haven's public baths consisted of a tub in the basement of
a public school. I photographed the tub and projected the pi