eemed
impossible to do anything for her in Chicago, and she was kept for two
years in a suburb, where the family of the charity visitor lived, and
where she was nursed through several hazardous illnesses. She now lives
a better life than she did, but she is still far from being a model old
woman. The neighbors are constantly shocked by the fact that she is
supported and comforted by a "charity lady," while at the same time she
occasionally "rushes the growler," scolding at the boys lest they jar
her in her tottering walk. The care of her has broken through even that
second standard, which the neighborhood had learned to recognize as the
standard of charitable societies, that only the "worthy poor" are to be
helped; that temperance and thrift are the virtues which receive the
plums of benevolence. The old lady herself is conscious of this
criticism. Indeed, irate neighbors tell her to her face that she doesn't
in the least deserve what she gets. In order to disarm them, and at the
same time to explain what would otherwise seem loving-kindness so
colossal as to be abnormal, she tells them that during her sojourn in
the suburb she discovered an awful family secret,--a horrible scandal
connected with the long-suffering charity visitor; that it is in order
to prevent the divulgence of this that she constantly receives her
ministrations. Some of her perplexed neighbors accept this explanation
as simple and offering a solution of this vexed problem. Doubtless many
of them have a glimpse of the real state of affairs, of the love and
patience which ministers to need irrespective of worth. But the
standard is too high for most of them, and it sometimes seems
unfortunate to break down the second standard, which holds that people
who "rush the growler" are not worthy of charity, and that there is a
certain justice attained when they go to the poorhouse. It is certainly
dangerous to break down the lower, unless the higher is made clear.

Just when our affection becomes large enough to care for the unworthy
among the poor as we would care for the unworthy among our own kin, is
certainly a perplexing question. To say that it should never be so, is a
comment upon our democratic relations to them which few of us would be
willing to make.

Of what use is all this striving and perplexity? Has the experience any
value? It is certainly genuine, for it induces an occasional charity
visitor to live in a tenement house as simply as the other