es over.

[Illustration: CLUB WITH WHICH A FOUR-YEAR-OLD CHILD WAS BRUTALLY
BEATEN.]

CHAPTER X.

THE STORY OF THE FRESH AIR FUND

The last echoes of the storm raised by the story of little Mary Ellen had
not died in the Pennsylvania hills when a young clergyman in the obscure
village of Sherman preached to his congregation one Sunday morning from
the text, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these
least, ye did it unto me," a sermon which in its far-reaching effects was
to become one of the strongest links in the chain of remorseful human
sympathy then being forged in the fires of public indignation. Willard
Parsons was a man with a practical mind as well as an open heart. He had
lived in the city and had witnessed the suffering of the poor children in
the stony streets on the hot summer days. Out there in the country he saw
the wild strawberry redden the fields in June only to be trampled down by
the cattle, saw, as the summer wore on, the blackberry-vines by the
wayside groaning under their burden of sweet fruit, unconsidered and going
to waste, with this starved host scarce a day's journey away. Starved in
body, in mind, and in soul! Not for them was the robin's song _they_
scarcely heard; not for them the summer fields or the cool forest shade,
the sweet smell of briar and fern. Theirs was poverty and want, and heat
and suffering and death--death as the entrance to a life for which the
slum had been their only preparation. And such a preparation!

All this the young preacher put in his sermon, and as he saw the love that
went out from his own full heart kindling in the eager faces of his
listeners, he told them what had been in his mind on many a lonely walk
through those fields: that while the flowers and the brook and the trees
might not be taken to the great prison-pen where the children were, these
might be brought out to enjoy them there. There was no reason why it
should not be done, even though it had not been before. If they were poor
and friendless and starved, yet there had been One even poorer, more
friendless than they. They at least had their slum. He had not where to
lay his head. Well they might, in receiving the children into their homes,
be entertaining angels unawares. "Inasmuch as ye did it unto even the
least of these, ye did it unto Me."

The last hymn had been sung and the congregation had gone home, eagerly
discussing their pastor's new scheme; but a littl