about
evenly divided. Congress might safely have taken a nap, with the Hub
Debating Club to handle its affairs, if Harry Rubinstein's big brother
Jake had not interfered. He came out of the kitchen, where he had been
stuffing the baby with peanuts, and stood in the doorway of the parlor
and winked at the dignified chairman. The chairman turned his back on
him, whereupon Jake pelted him with peanut shells. He mocked the
speakers, and called them "kids," and wanted to know how they could
tell the Tariff from a sunstroke, anyhow. "We've got to have free
trade," he mocked. "Pa, listen to the kids! 'In the interests of the
American laborer.' Hoo-ray! Listen to the kids, pa!"

Flesh and blood could not bear this. The political reformers
adjourned indefinitely, and the club was in danger of extinction for
want of a sheltering roof, when one of the members discovered that
Hale House, on Garland Street, was waiting to welcome the club.

How the debating-club prospered in the genial atmosphere of the
settlement house; how from a little club it grew to be a big club, as
the little boys became young men; how Joseph and Isaac and Harry and
the rest won prizes in public debates; how they came to be a part of
the multiple influence for good that issues from Garland Street--all
this is a piece of the history of Hale House, whose business in the
slums is to mould the restless children on the street corners into
noble men and women. I brought the debating-club into my story just to
show how naturally the children of the slums drift toward their
salvation, if only some island of safety lies in the course of their
innocent activities. Not a child in the slums is born to be lost. They
are all born to be saved, and the raft that carries them unharmed
through the perilous torrent of tenement life is the child's
unconscious aspiration for the best. But there must be lighthouses to
guide him midstream.

Dora followed Joseph to Hale House, joining a club for little girls
which has since become famous in the Hale House district. The leader
of this club, under pretence of teaching the little girls the proper
way to sweep and make beds, artfully teaches them how to beautify a
tenement home by means of noble living.

Joseph and Dora were so enthusiastic about Hale House that I had to go
over and see what it was all about. And I found the Natural History
Club.

I do not know how Mrs. Black, who was then the resident, persuaded me
to try the Na