ir
returns--so many children wanted in each town or district--the workers
from the missions, the King's Daughters' circles, the hospitals,
dispensaries, industrial schools, nurseries, kindergartens, and the other
gates through which the children's host pours from the tenements, are at
work, and the task of getting the little excursionists in shape for their
holiday begins.

[Illustration: SUMMER BOARDERS FROM MOTT STREET.]

That is the hardest task of all. Places are found for them readily enough;
the money to pay their way is to be had for the asking; but to satisfy the
reasonable demand of the country hosts that their little guests shall come
clean from their tenement homes costs an effort, how great the workers who
go among those homes "with a Bible in one hand and a pair of scissors and
a cake of soap in the other" know best. A physician presides over these
necessary preliminaries. In the months of July and August he is kept
running from church to hospital, from chapel to nursery, inspecting the
brigades gathered there and parting the sheep from the goats. With a list
of the houses in which the health officers report contagious diseases, he
goes through the ranks. Any hailing from such houses--the list is brought
up to date every morning--are rejected first. The rest as they pass in
review are numbered 1 and 2 on the register. The No. 1's are ready to go
at once if under the age limit of twelve years. They are the sheep, and,
alas! few in number. Amid wailing and gnashing of teeth the cleansing of
the goats is then begun. Heads are clipped and faces "planed off."
Sometimes a second and a third inspection still fails to give the child a
clean bill of entry. Just what it means is best shown by the following
extract from a mission worker's report to Mr. Parsons, last summer, of the
condition of her squad of 110, held under marching orders in an up-town
chapel:

"All the No. 2's have now been thoroughly oiled, larkspur'd, washed in hot
suds, and finally had an application of exterminator. This has all been
done in the church to be as sure as possible that they are safe to send
away. Ninety have been thus treated." Her experience was typical. Twenty
No. 1's in a hundred was the average given by one of the oldest workers in
the Fresh Air Service whose field is in the East Side tenements.

But all this is of the past, as are the long braids of many a little girl,
sacrificed with tears upon the altar of the coveted h