her son, who was a musician, shot himself, leaving his mother, then ninety years old, alone and desolate in a strange land, with no other refuge than the city's home for the unfortunate.

As we entered her room, she, with the old spirit of hospitality, arose and insisted that one should sit in her chair and another on her bed, while she herself stood. She remembered seeing Napoleon, and at the mention of his name her eyes brightened, her bent figure became more erect, and there flashed forth something of the defiant military spirit which, as a child, she must have felt. With a shrill and trembling voice she sang the "Lorelei" and the "Wacht am Rhein." In all weather she insists on going out daily for a short walk. For ten years the Almshouse had

been her home, and each year she had grown a little weaker, a little more bent, a little more helpless, until, as she herself said, "I can no longer sew, or mend, or read, or knit, for my head is always dizzy; I can only pray, and that do I all the day long."

Seated in her favorite corner was the witty Mary, at times demented. She spoke with a Scotch accent, and told a rambling story of a quiet village and the bonnie heather growing on the moor. She cunningly concealed her real name. As she was recounting in a disconnected way her girlhood and her marriage in the village church, thinking to find out her secret, I suddenly said to her, "Whom did you marry, Mary?" Quickly she answered, "I married me mither-in-law's son."

"Granny" Bone came to greet us with her hospitable Irish welcome. She had had two boys, one wild and the other always thoughtful of his old mother. The good boy died, and her mind was unbalanced. She was still expecting her John to come home again, and was often hunting for the t'akettle so that "we can have a cup of t'a together when my boy comes home." Looking intently into our faces, she asked, "Have you seen my John lately?"

Out in the yard we met "Jumbo," big, good-natured, simple-minded, loosejointed Jumbo, willing and ready as a child to run errands, to carry ice in summer and shovel snow in winter, but utterly irresponsible and unable to care for himself. In striking contrast to him was Mr. Nord, small of stature and of a nervous and

excitable temperament. His parents were wealthy and gave to their son every advantage. After graduating from one of our Eastern colleges, he spent several years in a polytechnic school in Vienna, becoming an expert naturalist. He could speak fluently several languages and converse with intelligence and even brilliancy: on many subjects. With the culture of extensive reading and wide travel, but broken in health and unable to cope with the practical world, he also found a home with the city's poor.

Sitting at his bench in the basement was an old man making the wooden buckets and tubs used in the institution. In his younger days in Germany he was a worker in wood, with an intense passion for carving. His untrained skill wasted

itself in trifles and

the

made him a wanderer. He finally drifted into Almshouse, and for many years he was an industrious worker at his rude bench. Beside him was an old man who could make by hand a complete pocket-knife, but machinery had rendered his skill of little commercial value.

Among the others were those who had been wasteful, intemperate, and vicious. Some were undeserving, many of

them had done wrong, but these things are true of a part of the children of luxury. The bent backs, the swollen joints, the wrinkled faces, of these unprivileged told the story of toil, hardship, and suffering. Most of them had done their fair share of the world's work. The Almshouse was the last gathering-place of the wreckage of

a great city, of the abandoned derelicts of our social and industrial life, but each one had made the human voyage.

The only fair method of the citizens of a municipality dealing with unfortunates is that of the Golden Rule. What would I desire if the misfortune should come to me, or, worse still, to mine? Society can well afford to be generous and merciful, for the fullness of the blessing comes

more to him who

gives than to him who receives. The social feeling for justice and kindness grows broader and deeper. In the long run the community reaps the greater reward because of its generous beneficent service. The old poorhouse was not the best which a prosperous city could do for its children of adversity.

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estates of five hundred acres each were set apart for different purposes: the Colony Farm, for the Almshouse people; the Overlook Farm, for the tuberculosis patients; the Correction Farm, for the House of Correction prisoners and grants; and the Highland Park Farm, for the development of an extensive park cemetery. They are so distinct that the entrance from the public highway to the Colony Farm is nearly three miles from that of the Correction Farm, yet there is opportunity for the absolute control for all time of a great, free, open environment. The Colony Farm is high and has a magnificent outlook over the surrounding country. The gardens, fields, orchards, pastures, poultry yards, and barns invite to useful, helpful tasks. In the city the speed and output of the shop and factory must be maintained and the inefficient are crowded out, but Mother Earth still has a place for men past their prime, for the weak, the crippled, and the aged. If they

only do according to their ability, she has ample room and welcome and reward for them. They can all be given some needed, useful work, and are happier for the doing of it for the common life of the colony. Their own labor brings from the orchards, fields, and gardens better and more nourishingfood. The normal environment of the country restores normal hopes, feelings, and interests. To most of them nature is as much a delight in their second childhood as it was in their first childhood. Four of the permanent buildings were completed, and in April, 1909, the six hundred people, crippled, defective, infirm, were moved to their new home and the old Almshouse or Infirmary in the city was abandoned. The inmates of the Poorhouse became the residents of the Colony Farm. The change from the crowded, humiliating life of the traditional institution to the

freer and more open life under the whole sky immediately expressed itself in the bearing and attitude of the residents.

The new buildings, which are a part of plans for a complete group, are of marbledust-plaster finish with red tile roofs, and in the setting of green fields and forests present a fine architectural appearance. Political opponents gave them the name of the Moorish Palaces." They are simple, but practical and beautiful. The use of the reinforced concrete construc

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