t of
doors. I was {99} shocked some years ago to find that, of six
Sunday-school boys who went with me on a little trip to our largest
city park, five had never been there before. This had not been due to
lack of time or money, though they had very little of either; but its
sole cause had been lack of enterprise.

There is an impatient and popular saying that soap and water are cheap;
like many other popular sayings, it is only half true. Personal
cleanliness is rather expensive when one takes into account the time,
energy, and frequent changes of clothing required to keep the body
daintily clean. Visitors should realize this in any effort to
introduce a higher standard of personal neatness, and should not be
impatient when they do not immediately succeed. Cleanliness and health
are so nearly related, however, that the effort is very well worth
making. A visitor who hesitated to complain to a mother about her
little girl's neglected condition, borrowed the child to spend the day,
and brought her home at night sweet, clean, and rosy, with her hair
well brushed and curled. The hint was taken.

{100}

It would be very unfortunate for the visitor to be an alarmist, for
there are imaginary invalids among the poor as well as elsewhere, but
more frequently the poor neglect the earlier symptoms of sickness
altogether, or else dose themselves with patent medicines. The quack
doctors who advertise in the daily papers draw much of their custom
from the very poor, who are also large consumers of cure-alls and
proprietary medicines. We have seen how children's physical defects
can pass unnoticed at home, and this is the case in a less degree with
the defects and ailments of adults. The very cheap grade of medical
service that is sometimes given by regular practitioners in poor
neighborhoods has a tendency to discourage the poor from taking
sickness in time. The visitor can help them to procure better medical
service at reasonable charges or, when necessary, without charge. The
grade of service in dispensaries varies greatly, but the medical advice
and directions given there with the medicines can be made far more
useful if the visitor will go with the patient and see that the
directions are understood and carried {101} out. Often no adult in the
family can spare the time to go with a sick child to the dispensary.
Here, too, the visitor's service will be helpful. In cases of
contagious disease, see that the Board of