l human problem she was passing judgment
quickly. Meanwhile a score of mothers, most of them Italians with colored
shawls upon their heads, had straggled in and taken seats, and one by one
they came to her desk. For these women who had been children in peasant
huts in Italy now had children of their own in the great city of New York,
and they found it very baffling. How to keep them in at night? How to make
them go to the priest? How to feed and clothe them? How to live in these
tenement homes, in this wild din and chaos? They wanted help and they
wanted advice. Deborah spoke in Italian, but turning to her father she
would translate from time to time.

A tired scowling woman said, "My boy won't obey me. His father is dead.
When I slap him he only jumps away. I lock him in and he steals the key, he
keeps it in his pocket. He steals the money that I earn. He says I'm from
the country." And a flabby anxious woman said, "My girl runs out to dance
halls. Sometimes she comes back at two in the morning. She is fifteen and
she ought to get married. But what can I do? A nice steady man who never
dances comes sometimes to see her--but she makes faces and calls him a
fatty, she dances before him and pushes him out and slams the door. What
can I do?"

"Please come and see our janitor and make him fix our kitchen sink!" an
angry little woman cried. "When I try to wash the dishes the water spouts
all over me!" And then a plump rosy mother said in a soft coaxing voice, "I
have eight little children, all nice and clean. When you tell them to do
anything they always do it quickly. They smile at you, they are like
saints. So could the kind beautiful teacher fix it up with a newspaper to
send them to the country--this summer when it is so hot? The newspaper
could send a man and he could take our pictures."

"Most of us girls used to be in this school," said a bright looking Jewess
of eighteen. "And you taught us how we should live nice. But how can we
live nice when our shop is so rotten? Our boss is trying to kiss the
girls, he is trying to hug them on the stairs. And what he pays us is a
joke, and we must work till nine o'clock. So will you help us, teacher, and
give us a room for our meetings here? We want to have a union."

A truant officer brought in two ragged, frightened little chaps. Found on
the street during school hours, they had to give an account of themselves.
Sullenly one of them gave an address far up in the Bronx, ten m