Close upon the heels of this effort to make books mean to poor children what they mean to the more fortunate,followed the idea of bringing to them a knowledge of those ways of having a good time within the walls of one's own castle that are so familiar in families where parents have leisure and ingenuity,and that make our childhood seem to our adult years,of a truth,a golden age.
Without the elbow-room that some kinds of fun require,without money to buy games,without leisure to play them or to teach them to their children,forever held down by drudgery,forever pressed upon by the serious hand-to-hand fight to keep the wolf from the door,is it strange that the poor know next to nothing of the commonest home games and diversions?To the Home Libraries,a name sweet and dear to us who have had to do with them,came this further idea of Home Amusements.After the exchange of books,conversation about them,the recording of opinions,perhaps also reading aloud by the visitor or the children,they turn from books to play.It is the duty of the visitor to be informed in the art of merriment,and to teach the children all sorts of ways of having fun at home.Nor is it a slight advantage that thus inducement comes to the grown-up folks to look on and laugh too.
But as naturally as the rose-bush grows and more than a single bud appears and turns to blossom,so came another unfolding from the Home Libraries stock."The destruction of the poor is their poverty."Might we not add to the home reading and home amusements inducements to Home Thrift?We began to get the children to save their pennies.Presently the Boston Stamp-Savings Society was established.So we purchase stamps from that society and supply them to visitors.The visitors in turn sell them to the children at the weekly meetings.The children are supplied with cards marked off into spaces in which they paste the pretty stamps as they buy them.When a card is filled,or when the total value of the stamps on a card is sufficient to make it worth while,perhaps fifty or seventy-five cents or a dollar,the stamps are redeemed,and the visitor goes with the child to open an account at some regular savings bank.The collection of pennies is resumed,to be followed by another redemption of the stamps and the swelling of the account at the savings bank.
I hardly need tell you that the Christmas festivities of the children are largely held under the auspices of the little libraries,or that in the warmer season you will find the visitors and children taking excursions together to the lovelier spots in the woods and at the shore.Once a year,too,we have a sale of plants.Last spring we sold three hundred and eighty-three plants to the children for windows and gardens.We have promised that all who will appear this autumn with live plants shall have a treat.
Through the visitors,too,we hear of cases of destitution,truancy,waywardness and moral exposure,of unfit dwellings,and illegal liquor-selling.Such things we report to suitable agencies--the other departments of our Children's Aid Society,the Associated Charities,the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children,the Board of Health,the Law and Order League.
From all of this you will easily see why we think that ten children are enough for a single group or visitor.We expect the visitor to know not only the children of the group,but the families to which they belong,and as the children grow older,and are graduated from the little libraries,to follow them still as their friends.It is a highly important function of the Home Library to bring with good books a good friend,whose advice the children will seek,whose example they will aim to follow,and whose esteem they will not wish to forfeit.
We are having to face more and more the question of the graduates of the libraries.One thing we propose for them is a printed list of selected books that are in the Public Library with the numbers that they bear.These lists in the hands of our graduates we think will continue to guide them to the choice of good reading.
So,too,we hope to see our graduates go from the little libraries into the working girls'clubs,the associations for young men,and the workingmen's and workingwomen's clubs.And we want the love of good books,and all that good books stand for,to follow them.
We have now,about six years and a half since the first library was established,seventy libraries scattered throughout Boston,with sixty-three volunteer visitors and a membership of six hundred and thirty-four children.Since June,1889,one paid assistant,a lady who was among the first volunteers in the work,has been employed,and has rendered most interested and efficient service.For the past two years we have employed also an extra summer-assistant,as so many of the visitors are away during that season,and as we try to give every library group at least one outing during the midsummer months.A committee of the Board of Directors of the Boston Children's Aid Society have acted as volunteer visitors,and promoted and strengthened in various ways this department of the Society.
From the beginning it has seemed best to let the experiment work itself out somewhat fully before attempting to say too much about it.A widespread demand,however,for fuller information has arisen,and home libraries are being established in various cities I hope that before long a full record of the establishment and growth of the Home Libraries in Boston may be placed at the service of any who seek to adopt this form of philanthropic effort among the children of the poor.
