Friendly Visiting among the Poor Part 6

[3] p. 25.

[4] "Public Relief and Private Charity," p. 109.

[5] See Fourth Report of Boston a.s.sociated Charities, p. 38.

[6] Eighteenth Report of Boston a.s.sociated Charities, p. 27.

[7] C. S. Loch in Fifteenth Report of Baltimore Charity Organization Society.

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CHAPTER VIII

RECREATION

I have said that the power to defer our pleasures is a mark of civilization. There is another mark which, in this busy America of ours, is often denied to the well-to-do as much as to the poor, and that is the power to enjoy our pleasures after we have earned them.

Charity workers still underestimate the value of the power to enjoy.

They are likely to regard mere contentment as a model virtue in the poor, whereas that discontent which has its root in more varied and higher wants is a splendid spur to progress. Professor F. G. Peabody quotes Lasalle in naming as one of the greatest obstructions to progress among the poor, "The cursed habit of not wanting anything."

The power of enjoyment seems dead in many a down-trodden, sordid life, while in many others it wastes itself upon unworthy and degrading pleasures.

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There is a pa.s.sage in one of Miss Octavia Hill's essays that throws a flood of light on this question. She says that the love of adventure, the restlessness so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon, makes him, under certain conditions, the greatest of explorers and colonizers, and that this same energy, under other conditions, helps to brutalize him.

Dissatisfied with the dull round of duties that poverty enforces upon him, he seeks artificial excitement in the saloon and the gambling den.

It is useless to preach contentment to such a man. We must subst.i.tute healthier excitements, other and better wants, or society will fail to reform him. In all the forms of play, all the amus.e.m.e.nts of the people, though some of them may seem to us coa.r.s.e and degrading, there is this same restless seeking to express what is highest and best in man; not only to express his love of adventure, but his love of social intercourse and his love of beauty. When we once realize that certain vices are merely a perversion of good instincts, we have taken the first step toward finding their cure.

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It has been said that a man's pleasures give us his true measure, and that to change the measure is to change the man. From this point of view, the subject of recreation is very near the heart of the friendly visitor's relation with the poor. We may have made a conscientious study of the family expenses and income, of the sanitary surroundings, of the work record and diet, but we shall not know the family until we know what gives them pleasure. One visitor says that she never feels acquainted with a poor family until she has had a good laugh with them.

A defective sense of humor in the visitor is a great hindrance to successful work: poor people are no fonder of dismal folk than the rest of us. When we come to recreations, friendly visiting not only makes large demands upon what we know, but upon what we are. Our pleasures measure us quite as much as they measure our poor friends, and, unless we have kept fresh our own power of enjoyment, we cannot hope to impart this power to the poor, or to give them new and better wants.

Granting that we have them ourselves, what {130} are some of the healthy wants that we should try to pa.s.s on to the poor? Taking the simplest first, we should try to introduce simple games and a love of pure fun into the family circle. I am indebted to Miss Beale of the Boston Children's Aid Society for the following list of simple games, so arranged as to include standing and sitting games for each evening:

FIRST EVENING. SECOND EVENING.

1. Hiding the thimble. 1. Stage coach.

2. Bean bag. 2. Buzz.

3. Dominoes. 3. Elements.

THIRD EVENING. FOURTH EVENING.

1. Hot b.u.t.ter blue beans. 1. How, when, and where.

2. Jack straws. 2. Counting buzz.

3. Fruit basket. 3. Magical spelling.

FIFTH EVENING. SIXTH EVENING.

1. Go-bang. 1. Tea-kettle.

2. Spot on the carpet. 2. Musical chairs.

3. Throwing lights. 3. Logomachy.

SEVENTH EVENING. EIGHTH EVENING.

1. Telling a story. 1. Pigs in clover.

2. Blowing the feather. 2. I have a rooster to sell.

3. Authors. 3. Courtesying.

In teaching such games it is best to begin with the children, but the parents can {131} sometimes be induced to join in. Story-telling is 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 s.p.a.ces. 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 pa.s.s 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, complain that the new branch of the Public Library opened there has interfered with their business. Beside encouraging the use of a lending library, the visitor should be ready to lend books, newspapers, and magazines, and should be glad to borrow a book from the family, when this will help to strengthen friendly relations.

The refining influence of good pictures is just beginning to be recognized by the charitable. Friendly visitors cannot always organize large loan exhibitions, such as are given in the poorer neighborhoods of London, New York, and Boston, but they can lend a good photograph or engraving, when they are going away, and can replace it, from time to time, by another picture. Such loans have {134} been known, like the Eastlake screen in Stockton's story, to revolutionize the arrangement of the household. Then, too, a picture often conveys a lesson more effectively than a sermon can. Mrs. Barnett tells, in "Practicable Socialism," [1] of a loan exhibition in Whitechapel, where Oxford students acted as guides and explained the pictures. "Mr. Schmalz's picture of 'Forever' had one evening been beautifully explained, the room being crowded by some of the humblest people, who received the explanation with interest, but in silence. The picture represented a dying girl to whom her lover had been playing his lute, until, dropping it, he seemed to be telling her with impa.s.sioned words that his love is stronger than death, and that, in spite of the grave and separation, he will love her _forever_. I was standing outside the exhibition in the half-darkness, when two girls, hatless, with one shawl between them thrown round both their shoulders, came out. They might not be living the worst life, but, if not, they were low down enough to be familiar with it, and to see {135} in it only the relation between men and women. The idea of love lasting beyond this life, making eternity real, a spiritual bond between man and woman, had not occurred to them until the picture with the simple story was shown them. 'Real beautiful, ain't it all?' said one. 'Ay, fine, but that "Forever" I did take on with that,' was the answer."

I have lived nearly all my life in a community where, during the last twenty-five years, there has been a great change in musical taste.

George Peabody left money to found a Conservatory of Music, and a few music lovers spent time and money to keep alive an Oratorio Society.

Later, the visits of Thomas' Orchestra and of the Boston Symphony Orchestra added to the strength of these local musical centres; but for many years the Peabody Conservatory was ridiculed and misunderstood, and the Oratorio Society was usually in financial straits. I mention these facts, because persons who are dependent upon the Conservatory and the visiting orchestras for all the good music they know have said to me that it must be impossible for poor people ever to appreciate good {136} music. But for the benefactions of George Peabody, and of Mr. Higginson (who made the Boston Orchestra possible), and of a few others, they themselves could never have known the pleasure of enjoying great and n.o.ble music, and, to this extent, at least, they are as dependent as the poorest; but they are quite sure that the great composers have no message for the poor. There is difficult music, of course, which only the scholarly musician can appreciate; but much of the very best music, if we once have a chance to become familiar with it, appeals to all of us. Then the artistic temperament is not a matter of either condition or race, as one of our young American musicians has pointed out. Lecturing with musical ill.u.s.trations to audiences on the East Side in New York, and to audiences of negroes in Philadelphia, he is convinced that "if good music were accessible to the ma.s.ses, it would be appreciated, and go far to elevate them."

"My boy," wailed a poor mother, "was that fond of music it took him straight to the bad!" And no wonder, for music--apart from the tawdriest of gospel hymn tunes--meant for {137} him the saloon and the low concert hall. We need, to counteract such influences, plenty of cheap concerts of good music; concerts following the plan of Theodore Thomas with his well-to-do audiences, who were given first the best that they liked, and then were taught gradually to like better and better selections.

All the higher recreations encroach upon the field of education, and I am tempted to mention, in pa.s.sing, some of the most promising educational efforts for encouraging study among the people. The American Society for the Extension of University Teaching, which has its headquarters at Philadelphia, has conducted very successful courses of lectures in poor neighborhoods. The enormous attendance upon the free evening lectures given by the Department of Education in New York school buildings is also significant. The popularity of the educational cla.s.ses in working girls' clubs, Christian a.s.sociations, and people's inst.i.tutes is another good sign. But I mention these here merely to emphasize their importance as tools for the visitor. In families where an ambition has been aroused, the visitor {138} should foster it by making connection with some such educational agencies.

There is a very obvious form of sn.o.bbery that we are quick enough to detect, the sn.o.bbery that looks down on people who have to work hard and wear shabby clothes. But an even more dangerous form of sn.o.bbery, because not so obvious, is the intellectual form, which claims an exclusive right to culture, and looks down upon the simple and unsophisticated. The fact is, that, save for a very gifted few, we are all of us dependent upon the gifts of others for what we know and what we enjoy. Probably there never was a neighborhood so exclusive but many were there upon whom education, refinements, and beautiful things were quite wasted; and there never was a neighborhood so poor but some were there who longed for beauty, education, and a larger and fuller life.

It will be seen in the next chapter that, when we attempt to supply the poor with the necessities of life, our path is beset with difficulties.

But when we give them those things which, though not necessary to life, yet refine {139} and elevate it, we can do them only unmixed good.

Gifts of books, flowers, growing plants, pictures, and simple decorations, or, as in one instance known to me, the present of several rolls of light-colored wall-paper to brighten a dark room--these help to express our friendliness, and have an added value as coming from a friend. Above all, however, we should not hesitate to share with the poor our delight in healthful and refining pleasures, and should find it natural to talk freely with them about our own interests.

Collateral Readings: "Parlor Games for the Wise and Otherwise," H. E.

H. "f.a.ggots for the Fireside," Mrs. L. P. Hale. "American Girls' Own Book of Work and Play," Mrs. Helen Campbell. "Gymnastic Games,"

published by Boston Normal School of Gymnastics. "Methods of Social Reform," W. S. Jevons. "Picture Exhibitions in Lower New York," A. C.

Bernheimer in "Forum," Vol. XIX, pp. 610 _sq_.

[1] pp. 119 _sq_.