s taken
pains to have the family live in a healthy tenement, and in many ways has
insured their well-being. They are now partially self-supporting; and
the older children are respectable and industrious, which we feel is
greatly due to the influence that the visitor has exerted over them and
their mother for four years.--Fourth Report of Boston Associated
Charities, p. 40.

_A Failure._--Gamma made his first application to the Charity
Organization Society seven years ago, at a time when it was even more
difficult than now to find volunteer visitors who were intelligent and
faithful enough to make a careful study of the needs of families placed
under their charge, or courageous enough to carry out any thorough plan
of treatment in these {203} families. The man was a German cobbler who
had married an American domestic, and at that time there were three
children, one of them an imbecile with destructive tendencies. The man
said he was discouraged, that he got work with difficulty and had no
tools with which to do it. Materials were furnished and members of the
Society found work for him, but, this form of assistance not being very
much to his mind, they soon lost sight of him, and it was not till
several years later that the Society again encountered the family in a
different part of the city, and a friendly visitor was secured to study
their condition and try and improve it.

The visitor reported that the man was "discouraged," the house filthy
beyond description, and that the life of the fourth child, then nine
months old, was endangered by the imbecile boy, who was violent at times.
Aid was given, and, the man's own theory being that he could do better in
another neighborhood, the family was moved and otherwise aided by money
secured from benevolent individuals. It soon became apparent that the
man lacked energy. He was given to pious phrases, and was a good talker,
but all efforts to inculcate industry or cleanliness were met both by man
and wife with the excuse that the imbecile boy interfered with all their
efforts.

At the family's own solicitation, the Society tried to find a home for
the boy; after months of negotiations {204} he was placed in the School
for Feeble-minded at Owing's Mills. This burden removed, the visitor
redoubled her efforts to make the home a decent one for the remaining
children, but without success. The beds were not made until they were to
be slept in, the dishes not washed unti