also an unfailing resource in our efforts to amuse the children.

But, during a good part of the year, there are many outdoor games in
which the children can be interested, and, now that the trolley cars
have brought the country so much nearer, country trips for the whole
family should be planned at frequent intervals. There are few things
more pathetic than the dread with which many of our city poor think of
the country, and to teach them country pleasures is to restore to them
a birthright of which they have been robbed. A love of plants and
window-gardening is another healthful pleasure. Mignonette, geranium,
wandering Jew, and saxifrage grow well in small spaces. To one family,
living in tenement rooms where there was no sun, a visitor gave a pot
of geranium. Later, the woman said: "We have taken it out on the roof
every day when it was pleasant to let the sun shine on it When I
couldn't take it, Mary did; and, for fear it should get stolen, we stay
and sit by it. I take the baby with me too, {132} and the baby likes
the sun as well as the flower does."

With all the added interest in outdoor exercise, and the freer,
healthier life of our time, we are slow to pass such advantages on to
the poor. The women of the family need much urging, sometimes, to get
them to take any outdoor exercise. Bicycles are becoming cheaper, and
a bicycle would be a good investment in any family where all the adults
are working at indoor occupations. If the visitor find a gymnasium not
too far away, the boys and their father should be induced to go to it.
With these added interests, a holiday will no longer be a thing to be
dreaded by the wife and mother, for there will be interesting things to
do, instead of mere loafing on the corner or at the saloon. One
visitor helped to cure a man of drinking by getting him an accordion--a
fact that has a touch of pathos, as indicating the poverty of interests
in the poor fellow's life.

The pleasures of books, music, and pictures ought to touch every life
at some point. Some aesthetic pleasures, it is true, are won only
{133} after long study and preparation, but the best art is universal
in its appeal. So far as books are concerned, our free libraries have
made us familiar with this view. The visitor should know the rules of
the nearest library, and should be ready to go there with some member
of the family, in case it is unknown to them. The saloon-keepers in
Ward 10, Boston, comp