ught until kindled, add four
inches of fresh coal, allowing the draught to remain on until the gas
is burned off, then shut the bottom draughts, take the lids half-way
off, and open the top slide, if the stove has one.

In many of the homes into which visitors go, cleanliness seems the
greatest lack. Sometimes the mother has lost heart; sometimes she has
never known what cleanliness was. Tact is necessary here to avoid
hurting the feelings of our poor friends, though some are far more
sensitive than others. The Boston woman whose visitor sent soap,
scrubbing brushes, mop, and pail, with the message that she was coming
on the morrow to use them, took this very broad hint and made the home
tidy for the first time in many months, but it is unnecessary to say
that all poor people {70} could not be dealt with in this way. One
visitor went, when she knew the mother would be absent, and helped the
children to clean the house. Another found that, if the family knew
she was coming, the home was set in order; so she was careful for a
time to come at stated intervals, then tried irregular visits, and was
finally rewarded by finding the home presentable at all times.

"Mr. William D. Howells, who during his recent residence in Boston gave
much of his valuable time as a visitor for the Associated Charities,
was amused one day to be told, on knocking at the door of a house where
he had studiously endeavored to inspire a sense of cleanliness, that he
could not come in, as the floor had just been washed and he might soil
it again." [1]

Housecleaning seasons are not always observed in poor homes. The
visitor can call attention to the value of whitewash as a cleaning
agent, and if once taught to do it, the children take pleasure in
putting it on.

{71}

It is not merely as the adviser about household matters that the
visitor can be helpful to the homemaker. Many women in poor
neighborhoods lead starved, sordid lives, and long for genuine
friendliness and sympathy. A friend who would be helpful to them must
exercise the same self-restraint that our own friends exercise with us.
The friends who encourage us to exaggerate our troubles and
difficulties are not our best friends: theirs is a friendship that
tends to weaken our moral fibre. But the sympathy that the poor need
and all of us need is the sympathy that makes us feel stronger, the
sympathy that is farthest removed from sentimentality. We should be
willing to listen