The church has tried to do something, also.

About twenty years ago, the Council of Women for Home Missions,
made up of groups of women from the different churches, began to
make plans for helping. They opened some friendly rooms where
they took care of the children who were left alone while their
parents worked. The rooms were often no more than a made-over
barn, but in these "Christian Centers," as they were called, the
children were given cleanliness, food, happiness and the care of
a nurse, and were taught something about a loving Father God. The
children who worked in the fields and the older people were also
helped. From the seven with which a beginning was made, the
number of Centers has grown to nearly sixty.

There is a great deal more to do in starting more Centers, and in
equipping those we have, and we can do part of it. With our
church school classes, we can give CleanUp and Kindergarten Kits
like Cissy's and Jimmie's and our leaders will tell us other
things we can do, such as collecting bedding and clothing and
toys and money. Best of all, we can give our friendship to these
homeless people.

For they're just children like you. When you grow up, perhaps you
may help our country become a place where no single child need be
homeless.

Florence Crannell Means
Denver, Colorado

ACROSS THE FRUITED PLAIN

[Illustration: Beechams in Reo]

1: THE HOUSE OF BEECHAM

"Oh, Rose-Ellen!" Grandma called.

Rose-Ellen slowly put down her library book and skipped into the
kitchen. Grandma peppered the fried potatoes, sliced some
wrinkled tomatoes into nests of wilting lettuce, and wiped her
dripping face with the hem of her clean gingham apron. The
kitchen was even hotter than the half-darkened sitting room where
crippled Jimmie sprawled on the floor listlessly wheeling a toy
automobile, the pale little baby on a quilt beside him.

Grandma squinted through the door at the old Seth Thomas dock in
the sitting room. "Half after six! Rose-Ellen, you run down to
the shop and tell Grandpa supper's spoiling. Why he's got to hang
round that shop till supper's spoilt when he could fix up all the
shoes he's got in two-three hours, I don't understand. 'Twould be
different if he had anything to do. . . ."

Rose-Ellen said, "O.K., Gramma!" and ran through the hall. She'd
rather get away before Grandma talked any more about the shop.
Day after day she had heard about it. Grandma talked to her,