nterest and sympathy of the classes that are drifting
farther and farther apart so fast, as wealth and poverty both increase
with the growth of our great cities. Each year the invitations to the
children have come in greater numbers. Each year the fund has grown
larger, and as yet no collector has ever been needed or employed. "I can
recall no community," says Mr. Parsons, "where hospitality has been given
once, but that some children have been invited back the following years."
In at least one instance of which he tells, the farmer's family that
nursed a poor consumptive girl back to health and strength did entertain
an angel unawares. They were poor themselves in their way, straining every
nerve to save enough to pay interest on a mortgage and thus avert the sale
of their farm. A wealthy and philanthropic lady, who became interested in
the girl after her return from her six weeks' vacation, heard the story of
their struggle and saved the farm in the eleventh hour.

What sort of a gap the Fund sometimes bridges over the following instance
from its report for 1891 gives a feeble idea of: "Something less than a
year ago a boy from this family fell out of an upper-story window and was
killed. Later on, a daughter in the same family likewise fell out of a
window, sustaining severe injuries, but she is still alive. About this
same time a baby came and the father had to quit work and stay at home to
see that all was well with the mother. By the time she was well, the
father was stricken down with a fever. On his recovery he went to hunt
another job. On the first day at work a brick fell off a scaffold and
fractured his skull. That night the _Tribune_ Fresh Air Fund came to the
rescue and relieved the almost distracted mother by sending four of her
children to the country for two weeks. The little ones made so many good
friends that the family is now well provided for."

From Mr. Parsons' record of "cases" that have multiplied in fifteen years
until they would fill more than one stout volume, this one is taken as a
specimen brick:

In the earlier days of the work a bright boy of ten was one of a company
invited to Schoharie County, N. Y. He endeared himself so thoroughly to
his entertainers, who "live in a white house with green blinds and
Christmas-trees all around it," that they asked and received permission to
keep the lad permanently. The following is an exact copy of a part of the
letter he wrote home after he had been