he children. They had sent them to Coney Island on a
vacation, but at night they were back home. "No one spoke to them there,"
is their explanation. They had their mother's pride.

It happened in the last month of that year that I went out to speak in a
suburban New Jersey town. "Neighbors" was my topic. I was the guest of the
secretary of a Foreign Mission Board that has its office in the
Presbyterian Building on Fifth Avenue. That night when we sat at dinner
the talk ran on the modern methods of organized charity. "Yes," said my
host, as his eyes rested on the quiverful seated around the board, "it is
all good. But best of all would be if you could find for me a widow, say,
with children like my own, whom my wife could help in her own way, and the
children learn to take an interest in. I have no chance, as you know. The
office claims all my time. But they--that would be best of all, for them
and for us."

And he was right; that would be charity in the real meaning of the word:
friendship, the neighborly lift that gets one over the hard places in the
road. The other half would cease to be, on that plan, and we should all be
one great whole, pulling together, and our democracy would become real. I
promised to find him such a widow.

But it proved a harder task than I had thought. None of the widows I knew
had six children. The charitable societies had no family that fitted my
friend's case. But in time I found people who knew about Mrs. Josefy. The
children were right--so many boys and so many girls; what they told me
of the mother made me want to know more. I went over to East Eleventh
Street at once. On the way the feeling grew upon me that I had found my
friend's Christmas present--I forgot to say that it was on Christmas
Eve--and when I saw them and gathered something of the fight that splendid
little woman had waged for her brood those eight long years, I knew that
my search was over. When we had set up a Christmas tree together, to the
wild delight of the children, and I had ordered a good dinner from a
neighboring restaurant on my friend's account, I hastened back to tell him
of my good luck and his. I knew he was late at the office with his mail.

[Illustration: "WHEN WE HAD SET UP A CHRISTMAS TREE TOGETHER, TO THE WILD
DELIGHT OF THE CHILDREN."]

Half-way across town it came to me with a sense of shock that I had
forgotten something. Mrs. Josefy had told me that she scrubbed in a
public building, but wh