e company of men and
women remained behind in the church to talk it over with the minister.
They were plain people. The sermon had shown them a plain duty to be done,
and they knew only one way: to do it. The dinner-hour found them there
yet, planning and talking it over. It was with a light heart that, as a
result of their talk, the minister set out for New York the day after with
an invitation to the children of the slums to come out in the woods and
see how beautiful God had made his world. They were to be the guests of
the people of Sherman for a fortnight, and a warm welcome awaited them
there. A right royal one they received when, in a few days, the pastor
returned, bringing with him nine little waifs, the poorest and the
neediest he had found in the tenements to which he went with his offer.
They were not such children as the farm-folk thereabouts saw every day,
but they took them into their homes, and their hearts warmed to them day
by day as they saw how much they needed their kindness, how under its
influence they grew into bright and happy children like their own; and
when, at the end of the two weeks, nine brown-faced laughing boys and
girls went back to tell of the wondrous things they had heard and seen, it
was only to make room for another little band. Nor has ever a summer
passed since that first, which witnessed sixty city urchins made happy at
Sherman, that has not seen the hospitable houses of the Pennsylvania
village opened to receive holiday parties like those from the slums of the
far city.

Thus modestly began the Fresh Air movement that has brought health and
happiness to more than a hundred thousand of New York's poor children
since, and has spread far and near, not only through our own but to
foreign lands, wherever there is poverty to relieve and suffering to
soothe. It has literally grown up around the enthusiasm and practical
purpose of the one man whose personality pervades it to this day. Willard
Parsons preaches now to a larger flock than any church could contain, but
the burden of his sermon is ever the same. From the _Tribune_ office he
issues his appeals each spring, and money comes in abundance to carry on
the work in which city and country vie with each other to lend a hand.
After that first season at Sherman, a New York newspaper, the _Evening
Post_, took the work under its wing and raised the necessary funds until
in 1882 it passed into the keeping of its neighbor, the _Tribune_. Ev